






























































































\ * 


\ 




Eng ) i 'by GeoEPerine^^ork 







\ 


























THE 

WORLD’S 





BEING 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 


OF 


LEADING PHILOSOPHERS, TEACHERS, SKEPTICS , INNOVATORS\ 
FOUNDERS OF NEW SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT\ 

EMINENT SCIENTISTS, Etc. 


, 

BY D": M.''BEN NETT, 

i * 


%>\j 


Editor of The Truth Seeker. 


SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 


NEW YORK: 

D. M. BENNETT. 

LIBERAL AND SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING HOUSE, 
SCIENCE HALL, 141 EIGHTH STREET. 

HU 









1 



Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 
D. M. BENNETT. 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
[All Rights Reserved.] 


486555 

JUL 2 0 1942 




V 




CONTENTS, 


Anaximander, 

2Esop, 

Anaximenes, 

Aristides, 

Anaxagoras, 

Aspasia, 

Antisthenes, 

Aristotle, 

Apollonius, 

Antoninus Pius, 
Aurelius, Marcus 
Averroes, 

Allen, Ethan 
Altman, Morris 
Amberley, Lord 
Andrews, Stephen Pearl 
Anthony, Susan B. 
Abbot, Francis E. 

Buddha, 

Bias, 

Bacon, Boger 
Bruno, Giordano 
Bacon, Francis 
Burnet, Thomas 
Bolingbroke, 

Berkeley, 

Buffon, 

Burns, Bobert 
Byron, 

Buckle, 

Burt, D. R. 

Bismarck, 

Buchanan, J. R. 

Bergh, Henry 


PAGE 


Barlow, Warren Sumner 937 
Buechner, 955 

Bell, W. S. 983 

Buckner, Mrs. Henrietta 994 
Bradlaugh, Charles 1001 

Boyer, A. J. 1027 

Besant, Mrs. Annie 1034 

Bennett, D . M. 1060 

Christna, 21 

Confucius, 57 

Cleanthes, 184 

Chrysippus, 188 

Carneades, 189 

Cicero, 200 

Celsus, 288 

Copernicus, 347 

Campanella, 365 

Collins, Anthony 422 

Condillac, 480 

Condorcet, 576 

Count Bumford, 612 

Cabanis, 632 

Combe, George 700 

Comte, Auguste 737 

Carlile, Bichard 711 

Carlyle, Thomas 811 

Cooper, Peter 814 

Child, Lydia Maria 835 

Chappellsmith, Margaret 838 
Chappellsmith, J ohn 843 

Colby, Luther 860 

Colenso, 877 

Chase, Warren 906 

Collyer, Bobert 930 


PAGE. 

90 

95 

105 

106 

150 

156 

160 

167 

216 

277 

280 

342 

554 

806 

808 

867 

899 

1025 

39 

92 

345 

355 

365 

403 

427 

431 

478 

642 

706 

798 

849 

874 

879 

895 



IV 


CONTENTS 


Cervantes, A. L. 
Conway, Moncube D. 
Crookes, William 

Democritus, 

Diagoras, 

Diogenes, 

Descartes, 

Diderot, 

D’Alembert, 

D Holbach, 

Darwin, Charles 
Draper, John William 
Denton, William, 

Davis, Andrew Jackson 

Euclid, 

Empedocles, 

Epicurus, 

Epictetus, 

Evans, George H. 
Emerson, Balph Waldo 
Eliot, George, 

Franklin, Benjamin 
Frederick the Great 
Fichte, 

Fourier, 

Fox, Wm. Johnson 
Feuerbach, 

Fuller, Margaret 
Froude, James Anthony 
Frothingham, O. B. 
Foote, E. B. 

Fiske, John 

Galen, 

Galileo, 

Gibbon, 

Goethe, 

Girard, Stephen 
Gall, 

Greeley, Horace 
Garrison, Wm. Lloyd 
Garibaldi, 


page. 


Gibson, Ella E. 950 

Graves, Kersey 974 

Gambetta, Leon 1014 

Hesiod, 71 

Heraclitus, 111 

Hippocrates, 114 

Hipparchus, 193 

Hillel, 196 

Hierocles, 299 

Hypatia, 310 

Haroun al Kaschid, 338 

Herbert, Lord 379 

Hobbes, 386 

Hume, David 460 

Helvetius, 476 

Hutton, 494 

Herschel I. 551 

Herschel II. 717 

Humboldt, 662 

Hegel, 669 

Higgins, Godfrey 680 

Hamilton, Sir Wm. 702 

Heine, Heinrich 744 

Holyoake, Austin 801 

Holyoake, George Jacob 888 
Hugo, Victor 822 

Helmholtz, 917 

Heinzen, Carl Peter 940 

Huxley, Thomas Henry 941 

Henderson, G. L. 946 

Heywood, 976 

Hull, Moses 984 

Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich 1009 
Hollick, Frederick 1018 

Herttell, Thomas 1048 

Inman, Thomas 795 

Ingersoll, Bobert G. 100? 

Jesus, 233 

J ulian, 296 

Jefferson, Thomas 557 

Jussieu, 732 

Jones, S. S. 902 

Jamieson, W. F. 99y 


PAGE. 

959 

991 

1006 

123 

144 

158 

388 

464 

482 

485 

846 

864 

932 

942 

146 

147 

179 

268 

756 

825 

915 

447 

471 

655 

677 

691 

753 

781 

900 

919 

968 

1028 

286 

373 

613 

580 

699 

635 

787 

829 

833 




Kant, 

Knight, Richard Payne 
Kneeland, Abner 
Kelley, Abby 
Knowlton, Charles 
Kerr, Michael 

LyCURGUS, 

Lucretius, 

Lucian, 

Locke, John 
Leibnitz, 

Linn^us, 

Laplace, 

Lyell, Charles 
Lincoln, Abraham 
Lick, James 
Lewes, George H. 

Leiss, Ph. Frederick 
Lecky, 

Lant, John A. 

Lessing, 

Menu, 

Mencius, 

Magus, Simon 
Marcus Aurelius, 
Mohammed, 

Madame Roland, 
Madame DeStael, 
Michelet, 

Martineau, Harriet 
Mill, John Stuart 
Mazzini, 

Martin, Emma 
Mott, Lucretia 
Mendum, Josiah P. 
Masquerier, Lewis 
Muller, Max 
McDonnell, William 
Massey, Gerald 
Moore, T. J. 

Newton, Sib Isaac 


Owen, Robert 

PAGE. 

672 

Offen, Benjamin 

695 

Owen, Robert Dale 

831 

Pythagoras, 

98 

Parmenides, 

120 

Plato, 

134 

Protagoras, 

140 

Pericles, 

153 

Pyrrho, 

172 

Philo Judasus, 

198 

Pliny the Elder, 

261 

Pliny the Younger, 

271 

Plutarch, 

264 

Pius, Antoninus 

277 

Porphyry, 

292 

Proclus, 

312 

Priestley, Joseph 

606 

Paine, Thomas 

517 

Proudhon, 

776 

Parker, Theodore 

783 

Pillsbury, Parker 

861 

Phillips, Wendell 

862 

Parton, James 

923 

Peebles, James M. 

926 

Pike, J. W. 

963 

Peterson, R. 

978 

Proctor, Richard A. 

1016 

Pott, Schuenemann 

1038 

Rousseau, 

466 

Rumford, Count 

612 

Roland, Madame 

615 

Reade, Winwood 

803 

Renan, Joseph Ernest 

935 

Rose, Earnestine L, 

949 

Rawson, A. L. 

979 

Solon, 

85 

Socrates, 

126 

Seneca, 

210 

Strabo, 

215 

Simon Magus, 

228 

Seutonius, 

273 

Servetus, Michael 

352 


PAGE. 

489 

606 

696 

937 

1057 

1051 

75 

203 

274 

391 

411 

458 

696 

730 

769 

819 

885 

910 

993 

1030 

1044 

11 

65 

228 

280 

318 

615 

658 

735 

746 

758” 

767 

790 

817 

858 

872 

924 

961 

965 

972 

405 



VI 


CONTENTS 


Shakspere, 

Spinoza, 

Saint Simon, 

Stael, Madame de 
SCHELLING, 

Somerville, 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 
Smith, Gerrit 
Sand, George 
Strauss, 

Sumner, Charles 
Seaver, Horace 
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 
Spencer, Herbert 
Slenker, ECmina D. 
Strange, T. L. 

Swinburne, Algernon Chas. 
Schopenhauer, 

Thales, 

Theodorus, 

Tacitus, 

Theodoric, 

Telesio, 

Tindal, Matthew 
Poland, John 
Thompson, Benj. 
Talleyrand, 

Thorild, Thomas 
Taylor, Robert 


PAG*E. 


Tyndall, Prof. John 912 

Taylor, T. B. 957 

Tuttle, Hudson 986 

Tylor, 992 

Underwood, B. F. 1019 

Virgil, 209 

Vanini, 382 

Voltaire, 435 

Volney, * 625 

Vander, Weyde 892 

Washington, George 495 

Wollstonecraft, Mary 640 

Wright, Francis 726 

Warren, Josiah 742 

Wright, Henry C. 778 

Weyde, Vander 892 

Whitman, Walt 894 

Wallace, Alfred Bussell 921 
Weatherby, C. M. 997 

Watts, Charles 1004 

Wixon, Susan H. 1032 

Xenophanes, 102 

Xenocrates, 163 

Youmans, 938 

Zoroaster, 49 

Zeno, 175 


PAGE. 

369 

395 

653 

658 

666 

679 

719 

733 

748 

785 

793 

856 

883 

909 

952 

956 

1013 

1040 

82 

186 

266 

315.. 

350 

414 

417 

612 

618 

649 

685 



PREFACE 


Little claim is made in these pages to originality or literary 
merit. The work is largely a compilation drawn from a variety 
of sources. Faithfulness has been aimed at, but possibly mis¬ 
takes may have occurred. In many instances the sketches 
have necessarily been abbreviated—often more than would have 
been wished had space been abundant—but the object has at 
all times been to retain the most essential facts. The works 
that have been made tributary are the British and American 
Cyclopedias, Chalmer’s “Biographical Dictionary,” Thomas’ 
“Biographical Dictionary,” “Heroes and Martyrs of Free- 
thought,” “Half Hours with Freethinkers,” “Men of the Time,” 
Lewes’“Biographical History of Philosophy,” “Eminent Wo¬ 
men of the Age,” various individual biographies, etc. 

It is not claimed that just the most judicious selection of 
characters has been made that could be; doubtless some have 
been admitted that more properly should have been excluded, 
and many omitted that should have appeared. Many more 
would have been added if the prescribed limits of the work 
would have allowed. Several living characters would have been 
added had the necessary data been easily obtained. 

If errors are found, either typographical or otherwise, the 
reader is begged to exercise leniency, on the ground of the dis¬ 
advantages in point of time in which the work was prepared. 
Although the work had been premeditated a year, four months 
ago some fifteen of the sketches only were written: all the rest 
has been done since, including searching authorities, writing 
type-setting, proof-reading, etc., besides attending to a weekly 
paper—“The Truth Seeker” —other publishing work, a nu¬ 
merous correspondence, and much besides. 

Eight here the undersigned gratefully acknowledges the 
assistance that friends have afforded in the preparation of these 
pages. Especially is this due to S. H. Preston, and T. C. 
Edwards, who have rendered very essential aid. Others have 


viii 


PREFACE. 


also lent a helping hand in a lesser degree. Grateful thanks 
are extended to each and all. 

This 'work was first issued under the title “ The World’s Sages, 
Infidels and Thinkers,” but the word infidel, being objectionable 
to some, has been dropped. All prominent characters have 
been infidel to the creeds they did not accept. The Brahmin 
regards as infidels all who do not embrace his particular creed.' 
The Buddhist takes a similar circumscribed view. The Chinese 
worshiper of Foh thinks all are infidels or barbarians who do 
not acknowledge his stupid God, and are not residents of the 
“Flowery Kingdom;” the descendant of Abraham regards all 
those as infidels or gentiles who do not accept Moses and the 
prophets; the Mohammedan boldly pronounces all to be infidels 
who do not shout for Allah, bow their heads towards Mecca, and 
acknowledge Mohammed to be the prophet of God; the Bo- 
mish Catholic Christian pronounces all to be infidels or heretics 
who do not bow down before the Virgin, acknowledge the 
immaculate conception, the infallibility of the Pope, and yield 
obedience to bishops and priests; the Protestant Christian thinks 
all infidels or benighted who do not agree with him in opposing 
the Pope, and in acknowledging faith in a personal God, a 
personal Devil, the equality of the Son with the Father in age 
and power; the Mormon regards all as infidels or heathens who 
do not accept the Book of Mormon, and the prophets Joseph 
and Brigham. Thus it has been all over the world and in all 
time, the devotees of nearly every system of religion the world 
has known have looked upon all others as infidels who do not 
embrace the faith they embrace; who do not see the truth as 
they see it, and who do not worship the same God they worship. 

It cannot be denied there has been too much intolerance and 
illiberality entertained by the adherents of all systems of re¬ 
ligion towards all opposing systems, and this spirit, carried to 
excess, has led to the most cruel tortures and deaths, the most 
bloody and devasting wars the world has known. The truth is, 
there have been elements of goodness in every system of religion 
that mankind have devised. There is no system but what, to a 
certain extent, has possessed truth and has had a beneficial 
influence upon the human race. On the other hand, all systems 
of religion that have yet prevailed among men have contained 


PREFACE. 


ix 

superstitions, fallacies and errors. The world has not yet found 
a perfect religion, one wholly free from mysticism, fables, and 
wrongs. This position will, however, be disputed by every re¬ 
ligionist in the world. Every one will insist that his system is 
all right, all excellent, all true — sufficient to save the world if 
it will only adopt it. 

Religions are subject to the same great law of evolution that 
everything else is. Change and progress are the universal 
law. We can stand still in nothing. The ideas, the philoso¬ 
phy, the science, the arts, the religions of five thousand years 
ago, of two thousand years ago, of one thousand years ago, 
are not all that we should search for, not all that wo need at 
the present hour. It is our privilege and duty to discard all that 
proves to be unreliable, all unworthy of our confidence, and to 
accept in its place that which proves true and better adapted 
to our present needs. When a system of religion is presen'.ed 
to us for acceptance that admits of no change, no advance, no 
improvement, we may safely conclude it is wrong, that it is 
not the religion the world needs. All ideas, all systems of be¬ 
lief must be free to change and to improve. The law of evolu¬ 
tion must operate in religion as in everything else. 

In analyzing and defining the word Infidel , Webster shows 
us that the prefix in means not; fides—faith; the two mean 
literally not faith — not faithful — not full of faith. The accept¬ 
ed definition is unbelief; unbelief in revelation, and especially 
in the divine origin of Christianity. This is the sense in which 
the word is used in the title of this work. The most of the 
characters treated were unbelievers in Christianity, but not all. 
Some of the latter were great thinkers, and introduced to the 
world such great truths, such new science or philosophy as led 
others to be infidel to the past. Of this class were Copernicus, 
Galileo, the two Bacons, Newton, Locke, and others. They all 
made numerous unbelievers in preexisting systems, and led the 
world forward to higher planes of truth. Hence the propriety 
of including them in this work. 

It is believed that the reader, in perusing the brief accounts 
of the “ old worthies ” who lived in the ages that are passed, 
will find that all taught wise precepts and good morals, and that 
no one sage, no one teacher, no one reformer had any exclusive 


PREFACE, 


claim to all the beauty, all the excellence, all the truth, all the 
morality that have existed. All have shared nearly alike in 
these qualities. The great mistake which the devotees of many 
of the systems of religion that have prevailed in the world 
have made, has been to cherish a feeling of exclusiveness and 
illiberality. They have imagined that their particular system 
or creed contained all that was good in morals and virtue, and 
that other systems were wrong, and should be suppressed. This 
spirit among men has been productive of great cruelties and 
suffering. If a more charitable feeling could have governed 
men — if they could have seen that which was good and com¬ 
mendable in the religions of others, the happiness of the world 
would have been greatly increased. 

There have been but few original systems of religion in the 
world; the later have borrowed from the earlier, and appropri¬ 
ated preexisting dogmas, legends, rites, and superstitions. This 
has been the rule in all ages, and the system which now prevails 
in our own country is no exception to it. It has not a dogma, a 
rite, a sacrament that did not exist in other older systems 
before its own origin. Its best moral lessons were also taught 
at a date earlier than its own advent. Moral precepts and 
maxims have been common with nearly all religions. Our duty 
to-day is to select all the really good and to reject all that is 
fallacious — all that does not meet the necessities of the pres¬ 
ent hour. 

It is hoped that the following pages may prove interesting 
and instructive to the reader, and aid him somewhat in his 
search after truth. 

D. M. BENNETT. 

Truth Seeker Office. 

New York. Aug. 25, 1876. 


PART I. 


FROM MENU TO JESUS. 


MENU. 

Menu, Manu, or Manou, was the revered law-giver and 
legislator of the ancient Hindoos, and his history reaches far¬ 
ther back into antiquity than any law-giver known to the 
world. Around him, as around many of the characters and 
events of antiquity, there rests not a little obscurity and 
uncertainty; but, as he is the reputed and venerated author ot 
a remarkable code of laws and morals, known as “The 
Institutes of Menu,” upon which has been, in part, founded 
one of the most ancient systems of religion among men, 
and which has a following to-day — including Brahmists and 
Buddhists —of over six hundred millions of human beings, it 
is most fitting that he should have a conspicuous place among 
the sages of early times. 

It is not, perhaps, singular that some disagreement should 
exist as to the time when Menu lived; but it is well known 
that his advent was far back in the early ages, when chrono¬ 
logical dates were not deemed as of so much consequence as 
in later epochs. It is known that his code is among the most 
ancient literary productions of the Hindoos, and that it was 
cotemporaneous with the Vedas or Sacred Scriptures of India, 
and in which he was mentioned and referred to. They were 
written in Sanskrit, the most ancient language of the world 




12 


MENU. 


that has been handed down to this age. As the Sanskrit, in 
the evolutions and changes in India, passed out of use some 
four thousand years ago, the sacred writings originally tran¬ 
scribed in that tongue must necessarily possess great antiquity. 

The opinions of Sanskrit scholars differ as to the age of 
the hymns of the Rig-Yeda, and the Institutes of Menu; Prof. 
Max Muller placing them 1,500 years before the Christian era; 
Prof. Whitney, 2,000 years; Dr. Haug, 2,400 years; while Jacol- 
liot says, “ The Hindoo laws were codified by Menu, more than 
three thousand years before the Christian era; copied by entire 
antiquity, and notably by Rome, which alone left us a written 
law —the code of Justinian, which has been adopted as the 
base of all modern legislations.” The Brahmins assign him a 
still more ancient epoch. 

The latter author, with other distinguished ethnologists and 
philologists, concede that India is the world’s cradle — the 
common mother of the religions, the morals, the literature, 
and the languages of the human race. The ancient Aryan 
nations which peopled Central Asia, and from which the 
Hindoos descended, existed many, many thousand years ago. 
As ancient as is Egypt with her lines of kings, and her pyra- 
inid-building races, India is older. As early as Chaldea and 
ancient Persia existed, the Aryans were earlier; as old as the 
Jewish race may be supposed to be, the Aryans and the 
Hindoos were much older. With China, India competes for 
priority in literature, civilization and early history. 

The Indian races early penetrated into Europe and founded 
nations and languages. The nations of Europe may well be 
considered the natural and legitimate offspring of ancient 
India. The Greek language is clearly traceable to Sanskrit. 
Jacolliot cites very many parallels between the two languages, 
and shows conclusively that the ancient Greek was an out¬ 
growth of the Sanskrit. The same may be said of the Celtic, 
the Sclavonic, the Gallic, the Latin, and the other languages 
and nationalities which for succeeding centuries existed in 
Europe. India was thus the parent of the religions, the liter¬ 
ature, the poetry and romance, even to the fairy creations 
and nursery tales which Europe has been credited with having 
originated. 


MENU. 


13 


The labors of Strange, of Colebrooke, of Sir William Jones, 
of Weber, Lassen, Burnouf, Max Muller and Jacolliot have 
thrown much light upon this vast and important subject. The 
latter said that “ Menu inspired Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and 
Roman legislation, and his spirit still permeates the whole 
economy of all European laws.” Cousin says, “The history of 
Indian philosophy is the abridged history of the philosophy of 
the world.” Jacolliot says, “I sought to understand those 
laws of Menu which were administered by Brahmins under the 
porches of pagodas, ages and ages before the tables of the 
Hebrew law had descended midst thunders and lightnings from 
the heights of Sinai. And thus did India appear to me in all 
the living power of her originality. I traced her progress in 
the expansion of her enlightenment over the world. I saw her 
giving her laws, her customs, her morals and her religion to 
Egypt, to Persia, to Greece, and to Rome. I saw Djeming and 
Veda-Vyasa precede Socrates and Plato; and Christna, the son 
of the Virgin Devanaguy, (in Sanskrit, created by God,) precede 
the son of the Virgin of Bethlehem.” 

“And then I followed the footsteps of decay. . . . Old age 
approached this people who had instructed the world and 
impressed upon it their morale and their doctrines with a seal 
so ineffaceable, that time, which has entombed Babylon and 
Nineveh, Athens and Rome, has not yet been able to obliterate 
it. I saw Brahmins and priests lend the sacerdotal support of 
voice and sacred function to the stolid despotism of kings, and, 
ignoring their own origin, stifle India under a corrupt theocracy 
that soon extinguished the liberty that would have been its 
overthrow, as the memories of those past glories which were 
its reproach. And then I saw clearly why this people, after 
two thousand years of religious thralldom, were powerless to 
repulse their destroyers and demand retribution, bowing pass¬ 
ively to the hated domination of English merchants; while 
night and morning, on bended knees, imploring that God in 
whose name sacerdotalism had effected their ruin.” 

He afterwards says: “In the same manner as society jostles 
antiquity at each step; as our poets have copied Homer and 
Virgil, Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terence; as our 
philosophers have drawn inspiration trom Socrates, Pythagoras, 


14 


MENU. 


Plato, and Aristotle; as our historians take Titus Livius, 
Sallust, or Tacitus as models; our orators, Demosthenes or 
Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates, and our codes tran¬ 
scribe Justinian, so had antiquity’s self also an antiquity to 
study, to imitate and to copy. What is more simple and log¬ 
ical ? . . . Do not peoples precede and succeed each other ? 

Does the knowledge painfully acquired by one nation confine 
itself to its own territory, and die with the generation that 
produced it? Can there be any absurdity in the suggestion 
that the India of six thousand years ago, brilliant, civilized, 
overflowing with population, impressed upon Egypt, Persia, 
Judea, Greece, and Rome a stamp as ineffaceable, impressions 
as profound, as these last have impressed upon us?” 

He further says: “The Sanskrit is itself the most irrefutable 
and most simple proof of the Indian origin of the races of 
Europe, and India’s maternity. ... In point of authenticity, 
the Yedas have incontestible precedence over the most ancient 
records. These holy books, which, according to the Brahmins, 
contain the revealed word of God, were honored in India long 
before Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Europe were colonized 
or inhabited.” 

Sir William Jones, the celebrated Orientalist, who in the 
last century spent many years in India in examining her 
ancient history, studying and translating her voluminous liter¬ 
ature, poetry and sacred writings, says, “We cannot refuse to 
the Yedas the honor of an antiquity the most distant.” This, 
for a man of his thorough education, extensive opportunities, 
raised, as he was, under the influence of Christian teaching, is a 
most important admission, and settles conclusively the futility of 
setting up Hebrew history, Hebrew theology, and Hebrew liter¬ 
ature as being the oldest in the world. The more thoroughly 
Oriental history is understood; the more that is known of 
her ancient religion, poetry, laws and literature, the more 
thoroughly we become convinced that it has an antiquity 
greater than that claimed by the Hebrews. 

Menu, in the Sanskrit, implies man, the most excellent man, 
and it was common for his loyal admirers to claim that he was 
the first man; that he was the son of the Self-Existent — a 
direct offspring of Brahma himself. They believed the “Insti- 


MENU. 


15 


tutes” were transferred from Brahma to Menu, and that they 
contained the excellence, the wisdom and the holiness of duty. 
The Brahmins claimed that the code of Menu, as originally 
transcribed, consisted of one hundred thousand verses. This 
number, by codification, compounding and revising, was reduced 
to twelve thousand verses; and when Sir "William Jones made 
a translation of the code in 1796, he found the number to be 
three thousand six hundred and eighty-five verses. 

The Code embraces a wide range of subjects, and imparts 
instruction for duties and conduct in all departments and con¬ 
ditions of life, including history, philosophy, religion, morals, 
social life, the relations of the sexes, civil law, regulations for 
the industrial and servile classes, etc., etc. 

Hindoo society was divided into four general classes; first, 
the Brahmins, or priesthood; second, the princes and warriors; 
third, the industrial and agricultural classes; fourth, the servile 
classes — the pariahs, who performed all menial services, and 
were allowed no opportunity to emerge from their degraded 
condition. The classes were scrupulously kept distinct, and 
were not allowed to commingle and associate together. The 
laws of Menu applied to each class separately, prescribing 
duties and service to each respectively. 

Although the Institutes, in the eyes of modern civilization 
and intelligence, contain not a little that appears crude, they 
are, in consideration of the age of the world in which they 
were written, a most remarkable production, and are well 
worthy the close study of antiquarians, philosophers, relig¬ 
ionists, moralists, the literati and the legal profession. They 
are divided into twelve chapters, and treat upon subjects in 
the following order: 

Chapter I. On Creation, and the early description of the 
world. II. Education. III. Marriage, and relations of the 
sexes. IV. Economics, and private morals. Y. Diet, purifica¬ 
tion, and women. YI. Devotion, and sacred duties. YII. 
Government, and the military class. YIII. Judicature, law, 
private and criminal. IX. Conscience, and the soul. X. Mixed 
classes. XI. Penance, and expiation. XII. Transmigration, 
and final beatitude. 

A few extracts, taken from different parts of the code as 


16 


MENU. 


translated by Sir William Jones, and as quoted by Louis 
Jacolliot, will give a very fair view of the nature of the incul¬ 
cations therein contained. The following is the opening verse: 

“ Menu sat reclined with his attention fixed on one object, 
the Supreme God, when the divine sages approached him, and 
after mutual salutations in due form, delivered the following:” 
Then follows a detailed account of the creation of the world 
and the different forms of life, with much of a metaphysical 
and philosophical nature; after which: — 

“To declare the sacerdotal duties and those of others in 
due order, the sage Menu sprung from the Self-Existing, and 
promulgated this code of laws.” 

“A code which must be studied with extreme care by every 
learned Brahmin, fully explained to his disciples, but must be 
taught to no other man of an inferior class.” 

“The Brahmin who studies this book, having performed 
sacred rites, is perpetually free from offense in thought, in 
word, and in deed.” 

“ He confers purity on his living family, on his ancestors, 
and on his descendants, as far as the seventh person, and he 
alone deserves to possess the whole earth.” 

“This most excellent code produces everything auspicious; 
this code increases happiness; this code produces fame and 
long life; this code leads to supreme bliss.” 

[Kequirement for a Brahmin student.] “To abstain from 
gaming, from disputes, from detraction, from falsehood, from 
embracing or wantonly looking after women, and from dis¬ 
service to other men.” 

“Let him constantly sleep alone; let him never waste his 
own manhood; for he who violently wastes his manhood, 
violates the rule of his order and becomes an avarcirni.” 

“Let him [a Brahmin] not marry a girl with reddish hair, nor 
with any deformed limb, nor one troubled with habitual sick¬ 
ness, nor one either with no hair, nor one immoderately talka¬ 
tive, nor one with inflamed eyes.” 

“Let a man continually take pleasure in truth, in justice, 
in laudable practices and in purity; let him chastise those upon 
whom he may chastise in a legal mode; let him keep in sub¬ 
jection his speech, his arm, and his appetite.” 


MENU. 


17 


“Wealth, and pleasures repugnant to law, let him spurn, 
and even lawful acts which may cause future pain, or be 
offensive to mankind.” 

“ Let him walk in the path of good men, the path in which 
his parents and forefathers walked; while he walks in that 
path he can give no offense.” 

The following quotations show the estimation in which 
women were held by the great law-giver; and it must be 
admitted they compare very favorably with the crude laws 
and customs in regard to females of nations and religions of 
much more modern date: 

“Women should be nurtured with every tenderness and 
attention by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and 
their brothers-in-law, if they desire great prosperity.” 

“Where women live in affliction, the family soon becomes 
•extinct; but where they are loved and respected, and cherished 
with tenderness, the family grows and prospers in all circum¬ 
stances.” 

“When women are honored, the divinities are content; but 
when we honor them not, all acts of piety are sterile.” 

“The households cursed by the women to whom they have 
not rendered due homage find ruin weigh them down and 
destroy them, as if smitten by some secret power.” 

“ In the family where the husband is content with his wife, 
and the wife with her husband, happiness is assured forever.” 

The veneration of women, engendered by the inculcation 
of sentiments such as these, produced in India an epoch of 
adventurous chivalry, during which the heroes of Hindoo 
poems accomplished high and valorous deeds, which reduce 
the exploits of the Amadis, Knights of the Round Table, 
and the Paladins of the Middle Ages, to a degree of compar¬ 
ative insignificance. 

The following quotations also allude to women, and the 
sexual relations: 

“The husband may be abandoned, if he is criminal, impo¬ 
tent, degraded, afflicted with leprosy, or because of a prolonged 
absence in foreign countries.” 

“The child born in a house belongs to the husband of the 


woman. 


18 


MENU. 


“ If, from circumstances, it is proven with certainty that the¬ 
reat father is some other than the husband, the child is adul¬ 
terous, and deprived of all rights in the family.” 

“It is the nature of women in this world to cause the seduc¬ 
tion of man; for which reason the wise are never unguarded 
in the presence of females.” 

“A female, indeed, is able to draw from the right path in 
this life not fools only, but even a sage, and can lead him into 
subjection, to desire, or to wrath.” 

“ Let no man, therefore, sit in a sequestered place with his 
nearest female relations; the assemblage of corporeal organs 
is powerful enough to snatch wisdom from the wise.” 

“That pain and care which a mother and father undergo in 
producing and rearing children, cannot be compensated in one 
hundred years.” 

“To send flowers or perfumes to the wife of another; to 
sport or jest with her; to touch her apparel and ornaments; 
to sit with her on the same couch, are held to be adulterous 
acts on his part.” 

“To touch a married woman on her breasts, or any other 
place which ought not to be touched, or being touched unbe¬ 
comingly by her, and to bear it complacently, are adulterous 
acts with mutual assent.” 

A few quotations will be given of a miscellaneous character. 

“Those men marked with the brand of dishonor, should be 
abandoned by their relations, paternal and maternal, and merit 
neither compassion nor regard.” 

“We may not eat with them, nor sacrifice with them, nor 
study with them, nor intermarry with them; let them wander 
in misery on the earth, excluded from all social ties.” 

“Of all the things pure, purity in the acquisition of riches 
is the best. He who preserves his purity in becoming rich, is 
really pure, and not him who is purified with earth and 
water.” 

“Wise men purify themselves by forgiveness of offenses, by 
alms, and by prayer.” 

“The Brahmin purifies himself by study of the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures. As the body is purified by water, so is the spirit of 
truth.” 


MENU. 


19 


“Sound doctrines and good works purify the soul. The 
intelligence is purified by knowledge.” 

The following passages illustrate the supremacy which the 
priesthood early held over the masses, and explain the source 
whence was derived the immense influence of priestly power, 
prerogative and immunity which the world in all the succeeding 
centuries has been compelled to sustain: 

“Never shall the king slay a Brahmin, though convicted of 
all possible crimes; let him banish the offender from his realm 
with all his property secure and his body unhurt.” 

“ No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brah¬ 
min ; and the king, therefore, must not even form in his mind 
the idea of killing a priest.” 

The striking similarity of name and character between 
Menu, of India, Menes, of Egypt, Minos, of Crete, and Moses, 
of the Hebrews, can hardly escape the attention of the 
observer. Each was a legislator that composed or codified a 
system of laws for the government of his people, upon subjects 
religious, political, civil and social. There can be no difficulty 
in deciding which had priority of existence. The history and 
civilization of India, as has been shown, date much farther 
back into antiquity than either of the other nations referred 
to; and from her each of the others borrowed language, 
literature, laws and religion. 

The literature of the Hindoos was of the most voluminous 
character imaginable. Sir William Jones said it was “abso¬ 
lutely inexhaustible, reminding him of infinity itself.” “The 
Iliad of Homer,” wrote Johnson, “numbers twenty-four thou¬ 
sand verses; but the Mahabhawata of the Hindoos, four hun¬ 
dred thousand; and the Puranas, comprising only a small 
portion of their religious books, extend to two millions of 
verses.” With these facts in view, it can be well understood 
that the productions of the Hindoo scholars were as profuse 
in quantity as rich in quality. 

Egypt, from its geographical position, would necessarily be 
one of the first countries colonized by Indian emigration; one 
of the first to receive the influence of that civilization which 
has radiated even to us. 

This truth becomes still more striking when we study the 


20 


MENU. 


institutions of this country, so constructed after those of Upper 
Asia, as to preclude other conclusions, and that the most obsti¬ 
nate prejudice must give way before the imposing mass of 
proofs that may be presented in the matter. 

The most irrefutable proofs of the influence of India and 
Greece, is in the fact on which we have already dwelt at length. 
That the name of the law-giver of Egypt should be so similar 
to him of India is no more singular than that the laws, cus¬ 
toms, grades of caste, the privileges of the priesthood, religious 
rites and ceremonies of the former should partake of the char¬ 
acter of the latter. 

The strongest proof, as already indicated, exists of the influ¬ 
ence of India on Greece. The names of the fabulous and 
heroic epochs of gods and demi-gods, the names of persons 
that Greece has transmitted to posterity, are nearly all pure 
Sanskrit. Minos was doubtless of Asiatic origin. Greek history 
makes him come from the East when he settled in Crete, where 
the people were soon struck with his wisdom, and besought his 
legislation. He afterwards traveled into Egypt, and studied her 
institutions; he also traveled in Asia and Persia when he 
returned to give the Cretans the book of laws so highly prized 
by his countrymen. It is not improbable, as a consequence of 
these travels and the laws he established, that he received the 
name of Minos, which, in Sanskrit, means legislator. That he 
derived his inspiration from the works of the Hindoo and 
Egyptian legislators, can hardly be doubted. 

Moses, the Hebrew legislator, was learned in the literature 
and laws of Egypt, having been raised and educated in the 
palace, and if he did not derive from India direct the knowl¬ 
edge of her institutions and religion, he did so through her 
Egyptian pupils. Thus it can be understood how, in the most 
natural way in the world, the laws of the Hindoo legislator 
were copied and utilized by the principal nationalities of the 
old world. 


CHRIS TNA. 


21 


CHRIS TNA. 

The descent of God upon earth to regenerate his creatures, 
and to lead them from the wiles of the Evil One, is the basis 
of the Hindoo religion. That God incarnated himself by over¬ 
shadowing a selected virgin; that this resulted in a miraculous 
conception, and that at the termination of the usual period of 
human gestation, he was born into the world, a puling, help¬ 
less infant; passed through the years of childhood and adoles¬ 
cence; that he afterwards engaged in his divine mission, was 
first taught and believed in India. 

Five thousand years ago the Brahmins of that country taught 
their devout followers that Yishnu, the second person in the 
Hindoo trinity, had several times incarnated himself in the 
manner alluded to, for the purpose of revealing himself to the 
children of men, and teaching them the truths of divine 
wisdom. 

It is not claimed that Christna, Chrishna, or Krishna was 
the first incarnation of this second person in the God-head, but 
he was one of the most popular and important incarnations 
ever accepted in that extensive country, especially with the 
women, with whom he was a great favorite; and for thousands 
of years he was worshiped as a Redeemer and Savior of men. 

Laying aside the divine character and the godly paternity 
attributed to this distinguished personage by the Hindoo priest¬ 
hood, whose teachings were reverently accepted by an emo¬ 
tional, highly religious people, there is slight room for doubt 
that such a person as Christna once existed. The tendency of 
the human mind to deify distinguished characters, and convert 
them into gods as objects of worship and adoration, has been 
marked; and perhaps nowhere in the world has this tendency 
been more conspicuous than in the land of the Hindoos. 

It is not for a moment to be supposed that the mythical 
ideas of primitive minds, that the Creator of the Universe actu¬ 
ally held sexual commerce with a daughter of humanity, and 


22 


CHRISTNA. 


begot a hybrid offspring, partaking equally of the divine and 
the human character—an incarnation of himself — is based 
on truth. The creation, wherever devised, must be attributed 
to the domain of imagination, invention and deception. The 
^onor—if honor it be —of the originality of such an absurdity, 
s wholly due to the Orientals of the land of India, and it is 
‘ank injustice in those who have appropriated the idea to 
leprive the original inventors of it. 

In giving the account of the conception, the birth, the life 
and labors of Christna, the teachings of the sacred writings of 
the Hindoos, and notably the “ Bhagvad-Gita ” are the sources 
of information. The reader will remember that the Hindoos 
were an imaginative, speculative people who delighted in mys¬ 
terious, weird, mythical conceptions; whose marvelousness, 
credulity and ideality—by the Fowler scale —would be marked 
seven, plus; and in this way he can account for the great pre¬ 
ponderance of invention, wonder and impossibility in the 
Hindoo theology. 

Christna, the most renowned demi-god of Oriental lands, 
and the most celebrated hero in Indian history, was held to be 
the eighth Avatar, or incarnation of Vishnu. It is not claimed 
that he belonged to the E£>ic age, where Menu can more prop¬ 
erly be assigned, but to the Puranic. When Christna’s story is 
divested of the marvelous, he will be found to have been a 
historical personage, belonging to that ej)Och when the Aryan 
race, leaving the northwestern corner of the Asiatic peninsula, 
began to make their way by gradual conquests toward the 
interior and the East. The Aryans had long been a nomadic 
people, pasturing their herds of cattle at the foot of the Hima¬ 
laya range of mountains, and in the plains of the Punjab. 

The legends of that far-back age lead us to believe that the 
primitive, elementary worship of their ancestors had yielded, 
little by little, to the more systematic and philosophical 
religion of Brahminism, though corrupted as it was, with the 
relentless institutions of Caste. 

There is a somewhat wide divergence of opinion among 
Oriental scholars, as to the time when Christna existed. Sir 
William Jones estimates that he lived in the time of Homer, 
nine hundred years before the Christian era; Prof. Max 


.CHRIBTNA. 


23 


Muller carries his advent back between one and two thousand 
years, B. C.; while Jacolliot, J. Cockburn Thompson, and 
others, insist that he must have existed three thousand years 
before Christ. Christna’s birth and life being described in the 
iPuranas and in the Sanskrit Dictionary, at all events, carries 
his advent far back into antiquity. 

According to the noted legends bearing upon the history of 
this distinguished personage, his birth was foretold by the 
tongue of prophecy, and the pious predictions were clothed in 
the elegant, poetic language of that age and people. A few 
specimens of these prophecies will be given as they are tran¬ 
scribed from the collection of Bamatsariar, from the Atharva, 
the Vedangas, and the Vedanta: 

“He shall come crowned with lights, the pure fluid issuing 
from the great soul, the essence of all that hath existence; 
and the waters of the Ganges shall thrill from their sources to 
the sea, as an enceinte woman who feels in her bosom the 
first bound of her infant.” 

“He shall come, and the heavens and the worlds shall be 
joyous; the stars shall pale before his splendor; the sun shall 
find his rays too feeble to give light; the earth shall be too 
narrow for his boundless vision—too small to contain him.” 

“For he is the infinite, for he is power, for he is wisdom, 
for he is beauty, for he is all and in all.” 

“He shall come, and all animated beings, all the flowers, 
all the plants, all the trees; the men, the women, the infants, 
the slaves, the proud elephant, the tiger, the lion, the white- 
plumed swan; all the birds, and all the insects, all the fish, in 
the air, on the earth and in the waters, shall together intone 
the chant of joy; for he is the Lord of all creatures and of all 
that exists.” 

“He shall come, and the accursed Rackshasas shall fly for 
refuge to the deepest hell.” 

“He shall come, and the impure Pisatchotas shall cease to 
gnaw the bones of the dead.” 

“He shall come, and all the unclean beings shall be dis¬ 
mayed; ill-omened vultures and foul jackals shall no longer 
find rottenness for their sustenance, nor retreats in which to 
hide themselves.” 


24 


CHRISTNA. 


“He shall come, and life shall defy death, and the period 
of dissolution shall be suspended in its sinister operations, and 
he shall revivify the blood of all beings — shall regenerate all 
bodies and purify all souls.” 

“He shall come, more sweet than honey and ambrosia;, 
more pure than the lamb without spot, and the lips of a 
virgin, and all hearts shall be transported with love. Happy 
the blest womb that shall bear him! Happy the ears that, 
shall hear his first words! Happy the earth that shall support 
his first footsteps! Happy the breasts that his celestial mouth, 
shall press! It is by their blest milk that all men shall be 
purified.” 

“From North to South, from the rising to the setting, that, 
day shall be a day of exultation: for God shall manifest his 
glory, and shall make his power resound, and shall reconcile 
himself with his creatures.” 

“It is in the bosom of a woman that the ray of the divine; 
splendor will receive human form, and she shall bring forth — 
being a virgin — for no impure contact shall have defiled her.” 

“ The lamb is born of a ewe and a ram, the kid of a goat 
and a buck-goat, the child of a woman and a man; but the 
divine Paramatma (soul of the Universe) shall be born of a 
virgin, who shall be fecundated by the thought of Vishnu.” 

“Let the Yackchas, and the Backshasas, and the Nagas „ 
tremble, for the day approaches when he shall be born who 
shall terminate their reign upon the earth.” 

“There shall be strange and terrible sounds in the heavens,, 
in the air, and on the earth. Mysterious voices shall warn 
holy hermits in the forest. The celestial musicians shall chant, 
their choruses. The waters of the seas shall bound in their 
deep gulfs with joy. The winds shall load themselves with the 
perfume of flowers. At the first cry of the divine child all 
Nature shall recognize its Master.” 

“In the early part of the Coli-Youga shall be born the son 
of the Virgin.” 

According to the Brahminical legends, the conception and 
birth of Christna was not only attended to by God himself, 
but his mother, Devanaguy, was closely watched over, evert 
previous to her birth, and prophecies were said to have been. 


CHRISTNA. 


25 


made in reference to her. Vishnu is held to have appeared in 
a dream to the mother of the unborn infant several days pre¬ 
vious to the mother’s accouchement, in all the eclat of his- 
splendor, and revealed the future destiny of the unborn child. 
Thus it appears thatjshe, who* was to be the mother of the. 
future incarnation of God, was prepared for the express purpose 
by divine instruction and power. 

Vishnu said to the mother Lakmy: “Thou shalt call the 
infant Devanaguy (in Sanskrit, formed by, or for God), for it 
is through her the designs of God are to be accomplished. 
Let no animal food approach her lips. Eice, honey and milk 
should be her only sustenance. Above all, preserve her from 
union with a man by marriage —he, and all who would have 
aided in the act before its accomplishment, would die.” 

When the child was born, the prescribed name was given to it. 
The mother, Lakmy, fearing her brother Cansa, the Bajah of 
Madura, with whom she lived — a wicked man — who had 
become impressed with the belief that the offspring of the 
new-born child would drive him from his throne, she decided 
to take her departure from the Kajah’s home, and conveyed 
the child to the house of one of her relatives named Nanda, 
lord of a small village on the banks of the Ganges, and who 
was distinguished for his excellence of character. 

The journey of Lakmy to the Ganges was a triumphal 
march. Although her brother, the Eajah, had allowed her an 
escort of two elephants only, it seems Vishnu sent one hun¬ 
dred elephants, richly caparisoned in gold and conducted by 
men richly clad. And when night came on, a column of fire- 
appeared to guide and guard them. The populace from all 
sides flocked to her and sang her praises, and did her great 
honor. They strewed flowers in her way, and made her rich 
presents of fruit. 

The Rajah of Madura, much enraged at the departure of 
the mother and child, and urged by Eackshasas, “ the Prince 
of Darkness.” interfered to thwart the designs of Vishnu. The 
latter, however, was the most powerful, and for the period of 
sixty days, which was the time required to perform the journey, 
he protected her, not ouly from the evil influence of dark 
spirits, but from the wild beasts that existed in the country. 


26 


CHRISTNA. 


The people along the route were charmed with the beauty 
of the young infant, which, though only a few days old, had a 
face suited to a woman of nearly mature years, and whose 
mind seemed as greatly developed as her face. Nanda being 
informed by a messenger from Vishnu, of the approach of the 
mother and child, came out a two day’s march from his habita¬ 
tion to meet them. He saluted them with the utmost kindness, 
and escorted them to his home. 

The young child passed her days very pleasantly in the 
house of Nanda, surpassing all her companions, not only in 
beauty, but in the ability to j^erform all the accomplishments 
of a young lady. When but six years of age, she knew how to 
discharge the duties of the household; to spin flax and wool, 
and to diffuse joy and cheerfulness throughout the entire 
family, in a manner superior to any of her companions. 

One day when she went with a number of women to the 
Ganges to perform ablutions, a gigantic bird came sailing over 
her head, and gently descending, deposited upon her head a 
crown of lotus flowers. All her companions were greatly 
amazed at this, and devised at once that she was destined for 
some very important purpose. 

Not far from this time the death of Lakmy, her mother, 
took place; but the child seemed not to grieve at the loss, 
knowing she had gone to the blest abode of Brahma, where 
she would be perfectly happy. 

When the cruel uncle, the Tyrant of Madura, heard of the 
death of his sister, he became incited by a strong desire to 
recover possession of the child. He judged the moment to be 
propitious, and with treacherous designs he sent ambassadors to 
Nanda with many presents, and with the request that, inasmuch 
as the child’s mother was dead, that she be returned to him, her 
nearest relative. Nanda was greatly grieved at the thought of 
giving up the child to which he had become so dearly attached, 
but he felt that the Rajah’s demand was but reasonable, and 
upon taking leave of her, his heart was very sad, and he bid 
her remember she would ever be welcome to his house should 
misfortune overtake her. 

The misgivings he felt as to the evil designs of the Tyrant 
of Madura were not unfounded. When the Rajah had secured 


CHRISTNA. 


27 


possession of the child, he threw off the mask of hypocrisy 
and confined her in a tower, and he commanded the doors to 
be walled up so as to preclude the possibility of her escape. 
The Virgin, however, was not distressed. Vishnu held commun¬ 
ion with her, and kept her heart from being depressed, and 
, she patiently awaited the time appointed by God to accomplish 
his celestial designs. 

The Tyrant, in view of the many hideous crimes he had 
committed, conceived it would be a desirable thing to have 
the young Virgin removed from life, and to this end he caused 
poison, extracted from the most deadly plants, to be adminis¬ 
tered to her, and great was his surprise when he found she 
was entirely unaffected by the poison. Next he tried to starve 
the young Virgin, and allowed no food to be conveyed to her 
for many days. This treatment caused no inconvenience to 
the young lady, for she obtained food from an invisible source, 
•and she suffered no inconvenience from the cruel machina¬ 
tions of her uncle. Seeing that he could neither poison nor 
starve his prisoner, he ceased his efforts in that direction and 
was content to keep her closely guarded and watched by a 
strong force, which he caused to surround the prison, threat¬ 
ening the soldiers with the most severe punishment should 
they allow the Virgin to escape. 

Then it was, when she was thus shut out from the world, 
confined within the walls of a dreary prison, that Vishnu 
passed through the solid prison walls to join his well-beloved. 
Here within the confines of this prison, did the great God 
Vishnu proceed to incarnate himself, and carry out the grand 
plan for the salvation of the world, and to fulfill the prophe¬ 
cies that had been made upon the subject. 

One evening as the Virgin was engaged in prayer, her ears 
were agreeably charmed with celestial music, her prison sud¬ 
denly became illuminated with the glory of heaven, and 
Vishnu appeared in all the eclat of his divine majesty. Devan- 
aguy fell in a profound ecstacy, and was then and there over¬ 
shadowed by God himself, and she conceived. [This is from the 
Sanskrit.] 

The period of her gestation was one of continued delight 
and enchantment. The divine infant which was gradually 


28 


CHRIS TN A. 


developing in her was so much a source of enjoyment to her 
that she regarded not her captivity and deprivations. She 
forgot earth and almost her own existence. 

On the night of the Yirgin’s accouchement, soon after the 
illustrious new-born infant had uttered its first wail, a violent 
wind opened a passage-way through the walls of the prison # 
that had confined her, and a messenger from Vishnu con¬ 
ducted the Virgin and child to a sheep-fold belonging to 
Nanda, situated on the confines of the territory of Madura. 

The newly born was here named Christna (in Sanskrit, 
sacred). The shepherds becoming informed of the distin¬ 
guished personage that had come among them and had been, 
confided to their care, prostrated themselves upon the ground 
before the young demi-god, and worshiped him. The same 
night the good Nanda was informed by a dream of what had 
been done, and in the morning with servants and with wise 
and good people, he started in search of the Virgin and child. 

The Tyrant of Madura hearing of the accouchement and 
escape of the Virgin, and still being impressed that her 
son was to supplant him, immediately set out to have her 
destroyed, so that his power might remain untouched. He 
passed an edict that all the male children within his States, 
on the night of the birth of Christna, should be put to death, 
thinking he would thus surely reach the one whose coming 
power he feared would drive him from his throne. 

When the soldiers of the Bajah approached the sheep-fold 
of Nanda, and as the infant was nursing at the Virgin’s breast, 
those in attendance became greatly alarmed for the safety of 
the child and were preparing to defend him, when all at once 
the child commenced to grow, and in a few seconds attained 
the size of a child of ten years, and ran out to amuse himself 
with the sheep. The soldiers passed him without the slightest 
suspicion who he was, and thus he escaped their evil designs. 

Nanda deeming the place insecure for the mother and child, 
caused her to be removed to the banks of the Ganges, where 
Devanaguy was once more enabled to enjoy the scenery with 
which her childhood had been familiar. 

The childhood and early youth of Christna will be hurriedly 
passed over. Suffice it to say, many miracles and wonderful 


CHRISTNA. 


29 


works are ascribed to him during this period, and the poems 
that were written upon the subject by his admiring country¬ 
men, and the praises that were sung in adulation of his early 
career, would fill several volumes. 

When he arrived at the age of sixteen, he quitted his mother 
-and relative Nanda, and commenced his mission, traveling over 
India and preaching to the people. Jacolliot thus speaks: “ In 
this second period of his life, Hindoo poetry represents him in 
his constant strife against the perverse spirits, not only of the 
people, but also of the princes; he surmounts extraordinary 
-dangers; contends single-handed against whole armies sent to 
destroy him; strews his way with miracles, resuscitating the 
'dead, healing lepers, restoring the deaf and the blind, every¬ 
where supporting the weak against the strong, the oppressed 
ngainst the powerful, and loudly proclaiming to all that he is 
the second person of the Trinity; that is, Vishnu come again 
upon earth to redeem man from original transgression, to eject 
the spirit of evil, and to restore the reign of good. The pupu- 
lations crowded his way, eager for his sublime instructions, 
saying: ‘ This is indeed the Redeemer promised to our fathers . J 

Passing over the details of his mission life, the account of 
the numerous miracles he performed, we see that he gathered 
around him a band of faithful disciples, the principal among 
whom was Arjuna, a young man of one of the families of 
Madura, who became very closely attached to his master, and 
daily hung upon him and listened to the utterances that fell 
from his lips. The dialogues which passed between Christna 
and Arjuna, and the teachings of the former to the latter, 
make a volume of themselves, and is called the “Bhagvad- 
Gita.” Sir William Jones made the first translation of this 
poem into English. J. Cockburn Thompson, an English philol¬ 
ogist, made another. This work has been reprinted in this coun¬ 
try, and largely sold. It contains many exalted sentiments, 
nlothed in the rich, poetical language of the East, and may 
well be regarded as a most valuable contribution to the present 
age of the literature of four or five thousand years ago. 

Christna and his disciples for many years led a wandering 
life, replete with hardships and cares, and spent their time in 
proclaiming the will of heaven and in performing good works. 


30 


CHRISTNA. 


They had many hardships to endure and many dangers to 
meet. The evil influences seemed to follow them to do all they 
could to harm and annoy them. 

The teachings of the Hindoo Reformer, and the examples of 
purity which he set, are said to have wakened the people to new 
realizations of duty. “A spark of reviving vitality began to 
circulate throughout India,” and the partisans of the past, 
urged on by the Tyrant of Madura, sought to lay snares for 
Christna and his disciples, to persecute them, and to obtain 
power over them. Soldiers were sent to arrest them, and to 
throw them into prison, but without effect. Sometimes whole 
villages of the populace would rise and defend Christna and 
his followers against the machinations of those who conspired 
against them; and sometimes the soldiers themselves, moved 
by the divine spirit which attended Christna, laid down their 
arms, besought his pardon, and begged to be allowed to fol¬ 
low him. 

One day a chief of the troops sent against Christna, and 
who, though having sworn to withstand both fear and persua¬ 
sion, having surprised the great Teacher in an isolated place,, 
was so much struck with his majestic bearing, that he stripped 
himself of his symbols of power, and entreated to be allowed 
admission into the number of the faithful. His request was 
complied with, and from that time the new faith had no more 
ardent defender than this same JSarawasta , who afterwards 
attended his divine master. 

Christna often retired from his disciples to commune apart 
and to test their ability to pass difficult moments without his 
assistance. When their courage was sinking in despair he 
would suddenly reappear among them and re-inspire them with 
new ardor and zeal. During these absences Arjuna governed 
the little community and took the master’s place at sacrifice 
and prayer, and all cheerfully submitted to his authority. 

As the teachings of Christna are of more importance than a. 
recital of the miracles he performed and the events that befell 
him, we will pass over the latter and give more space to the 
former. At the period of his death it is claimed that the 
much larger portion of India had adopted his doctrines and 
principles. An active, young, vivid faith had become implanted 


CHKISTNA. 


31 


in the breasts of the people and permeated all classes. Their 
lives had been purified, their conduct had been largely 
improved, and their tendency to evil actions greatly lessened 
— “the regeneration promised by Brahma was accomplished .’ 1 

Christna’s teachings, when addressed to the people, were 
simple and familiar; when addressed to his disciples they 
were philosophical and elevated. A favorite style of teaching 
with him was by parable, he seeming to prefer this symbolic 
manner of imparting instruction. Fable and allegory were 
favorite forms with the Orientals in imparting moral lessons,, 
and the Hindoo Redeemer readily adopted them. 

Among the voluminous moral and philosophical teachings, 
ascribed in Brahminical poems to Christna, the following are 
presented, more as samples of his style of teaching, than to 
give an idea of their aggregate amount: 

“Those who do not control their passions, cannot act 
properly towards others.” 

“The evils we inflict upon others, follow us as our shadows 
follow our bodies.” 

“Virtue sustains the soul, as the muscles sustain the body.” 

“When the poor man knocks at your door, take him in and 
administer to his wants, for the poor are the chosen of God.” 

“ Look not upon a woman with unchaste desires.” 

“Avoid envy, covetousness, falsehood, imposture, slander and 
sexual desires.” 

“Above all things, cultivate love for your neighbor.” 

“Do good for its own sake, and expect not your reward for 
it on earth.” 

“Never take delight in another’s misfortune.” 

“It is better to forgive an injury than to avenge it.” 

“What you blame in others, do not practice yourself.” 

“He who rules his temper conquers his greatest enemy.” 

“The wise man governs his passions, but the fool obeys, 
them.” 

“Be at war with men’s vices, but at peace with their 
persons.” 

“There should be no disagreement between your lives and 
your doctrines.” 

“Spend every day as though it were the last.” 


32 


CHRISTN A. 


“Lead not one life in public, and another in private.” 

“We must master our evil propensities, or they will mas¬ 
ter us.” 

“He who hath conquered his propensities, rules over a 
kingdom.” 

“As the sandal-tree perfumes the ax which fells it, so the 
good man sheds good upon his enemies.” 

“The wounds of the soul are more important than those of 
the body.” 

“The virtuous man is like the banyan-tree, which shelters 
and protects all around it.” 

“ The virtuous woman will have but one husband, and the 
Tight-minded man but one wife.” 

“It is a high crime to take advantage of the weakness of 
woman.” 

Space will not allow the teachings of Christna to be given 
with any degree of fullness, as they would of themselves fill a 
volume. To summarize his moral teachings and life, it may 
be said he spent his time in working miracles, raising the 
-dead, healing lepers, restoring the deaf, giving sight to the 
blind, healing the sick, befriending the weak, and in comfort¬ 
ing the afflicted. He taught peace, charity, love to man, self- 
denial, self-respect and the practice of all the virtues. 

He taught the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of 
future rewards and punishments, and the necessity of resisting 
-and vanquishing Backshasas, the Prince of Evil. 

In the language of Jacolliot, “ he inculcated the sublimest 
doctrines and the purest morals. He forbade revenge, and 
commanded to return good for evil. He lived poor, and loved 
the poor. He lived chaste, and enjoined chastity upon his dis¬ 
ciples. Problems the most pure and lofty, morals the most 
pure and sublime, and the future destiny of man, were themes 
which engaged his most profound attention.” “Christna, we 
will venture to say, was the greatest of philosophers, not only 
of India, but of the entire world. He was the grandest moral 
figure in ancient times. He was a moralist and a philosopher. 
His moral lessons are to be admired for their sublimity and 
purity. He was recognized as the ‘Divine Word,’ and his dis¬ 
ciples gave him the name of Jezeus, which signifies ‘pure 


CHRISTNA. 


33 


-essence.’ He was often styled the ‘promised of God,’ and the 
‘ Messiah.’ ” 

To show his humility, it is recorded of him that he washed 
the feet of his disciples. To show his power, as well as his 
appreciation of the adoration of his admirers, it is written of 
him that on one occasion, when he walked among a large con¬ 
course of people, two women of the lower order drew near to 
him, and poured upon his head the perfumes they had brought 
in a little vase, and they worshiped him. Upon this, some of 
the people murmured at their boldness, when Christna said 
kindly to them: “Women, I accept your sacrifice; the little 
which is given by the heart is of more worth than all the 
riches afforded by ostentation. What desire you of me?” 
They answered: “Lord, the brows of our husbands are clouded 
with care; happiness has fled from our homes, for God hath 
refused us the joys of being mothers.” Then Christna raised 
them from their knees and from kissing his feet, and said to 
them: “Your demand shall be gratified. You have believed in 
me, and joy shall re-enter your houses.” It is related that 
afterwards, in due time, these women, named Nichdali and 
Sarasvati, were each delivered of a son, who afterwards became 
holy personages whom the Hindoos held in great reverence. 

From the earliest records of Christna, he has been the 
favorite deity of the Hindoo women, and their adoration of 
kim has been greater than of any incarnation or representa¬ 
tion of deity. 

On a certain occasion, when the Tyrant of Madura had sent 
a large army against Christna and his disciples, the latter were 
greatly terrified and sought to escape danger by flight. Even 
Arjuna himself seemed to falter. Christna, who was praying 
near them, and hearing their complaints, soon appeared in 
their midst and said: “Why are your spirits possessed with 
such senseless fear? Know you not who he is that is with 
you?” It is said, in connection, that he then abandoned the 
mortal form and appeared to their eyes in all the eclat of his 
divine majesty, as his father Vishnu had done before him. His 
brow was encircled with light; and Arjuna and his companions, 
unable to endure the brilliance, threw themselves upon their 
faces in the dust, and prayed to Christna to pardon their 


34 


CHRIST NA. 


unworthy weakness. Upon resuming his usual form, he said:: 
“Have you not, then, faith in me? Know that present or 
absent, I shall always be in your midst to protect you.” They 
were greatly struck by what they had witnessed, and assured 
him they would never again doubt his power. Again they 
called him Jezeus—an emanation from the pure, divine essence. 

This was near the close of his earthly career. He declared 
that his work w r as accomplished. Not less than three millions 
of the people of India had become believers in him. The 
nation felt a younger blood coursing in its veins. “Everywhere 
labor was sanctified by prayer; hope and faith warmed all 
hearts.” Christna disclosed to his disciples that the hour had 
come for him to quit the earth, and to return to the bosom 
of his Father who had sent him. 

“Forbidding his disciples to follow him, he went one day to 
make his ablutions on the banks of the Ganges and w T ash out 
the stains that his mortal envelope might have contracted in 
the struggle of every nature which he had been obliged to 
sustain against the partisans of the past. Arrived at the sacred 
river, he plunged himself three times therein, then kneeling 
and looking to heaven, he prayed, expecting death. In this 
position he was pierced with arrows by one of those whose 
crimes he had unveiled, and who, hearing of his journey to the 
Ganges, had, w r ith a strong troop, followed with the design of 
assassinating him. This man was named Angada; according, 
to popular belief, condemned for his crime, to eternal life on 
earth, he wanders upon the banks of the Ganges, having no* 
other food than the remains of the dead, upon which he feeds 
constantly, in company with .jackals and other unclean ani¬ 
mals.” [Jacolliot.l 

The body of the demi-god Christna was suspended upon a 
tree by the men who murdered him, and was left there to 
become the prey of vultures. Other legends have it that he- 
was crucified between two thieves v T ho had been condemned 
to death. 

The news of his death spread rapidly among his followers* 
and a large concourse, led by Arjuna —the dearest of the 
disciples of Christna — sought to recover his mortal remains. 
But the Hindoo .Redeemer had entirely passed from their sight. 


CHRISTNA. 


35 


The body could not be found, and his mourning friends bewail¬ 
ing their loss, devoutly believed that he had betaken himself 
to his celestial abodes. The tree on which ^his body was 
extended is said to have suddenly become covered with large 
red flowers, which diffused around the sweetest perfume. 

Thus ended the mortal career of Christna, probably the 
greatest reputed incarnation of deity which has been revered 
by man. He died the victim of the wickedness of those who 
would not accept his law —a class of sinful men, distinguished 
for their vices, and reprobate to all good. 

It is not to be supposed, at this day, that all that the 
Brahmin and the Hindoo poets have narrated of Christna was 
literally true. He was doubtless a noted teacher and reformer, 
who flourished in India about five thousand years ago, who 
became very popular with his numerous followers. The mar¬ 
velous, deific and miraculous portions of his adventures were 
probably due to the fertile imagination of the Eastern mind. 
After he had passed away it was very easy for his admirers to 
attribute deific powers and properties to him, as has been done 
to many other heroes and leaders who have since lived. 

The striking similarity in name, life, character, teachings, 
and death, between Christna of India, and Christ of Judea, 
must be obvious to the most obtuse observer. It is not strange 
that the first Christian missionaries who journeyed to Eastern 
lands were struck with the great resemblance in the religious 
faith which they found existing there, and that which they 
went to teach. That this has been the case, numerous author¬ 
ities can be cited; notably, the Rev. Father Dubois, a Catholic 
missionary to India, who said he “ found there justice, human¬ 
ity, good faith, compassion, disinterestedness, in fact, all the 
virtues were familiar to the ancient Brahmins.” “Why should 
I change my religion?” demanded a Brahmin with whom I 
was one day discussing these matters. “Ours is as good as 
yours, if not better, and you but date it all since eighteen 
centuries, while our belief is continuous, without interruption, 
from the creation of the world. God, according to you, and 
you thus diminish him, required several efforts to provide 
you with a religion; according to us, he revealed his law in 
creating us. Wherever man has strayed, he has manifested 


36 


CHKISTNA. 


himself, to recall him to the primitive faith. Lastly, he incar¬ 
nated himself in the person of Christna, who came not to 
instruct humanity in new laws, but to efface original sin and 
purify morals. This incarnation you have adopted, as you 
have adopted our tradition of the creation and of Adima and 
Heva.” [For India, too, had an Adam and Eve.] 

“We still expect another before the end of the world, that 
of Christna, coming to encounter the Prince of Rackshasas, 
disguised as a horse; and from what you have just told me of 
your Apocalypse, you have also borrowed this prophecy from 
us. Your religion is but an infiltration, a souvenir of ours; 
wherefore, then, desire me to adopt it? If you would succeed, 
do not begin by teaching me principles that I find in all our 
holy books, and a morale which we possess in India from long 
before Europe had opened its eyes to the light of civilization. ” 

The old Brahmin spoke so truthfully and with so much 
intelligence, that the missionary was nonplussed and could say 
little in reply. It is not strange, in view of these facts, that 
all the Christian missionaries who have gone to that country 
to carry the “gospel” to its inhabitants have met with such 
indifferent success. 

To evade the awkward position in which these Christian 
propagandists find themselves placed — of carrying a system 
of religion to an ancient people who had long possessed the 
same stories and the same legends — they have sometimes 
claimed that the Hindoo theology had been borrowed from 
the Jewish and the Christian creeds, and that the story of 
Christna was built upon the model of that of Christ; but 
this subterfuge will not avail. It is easy to show by every 
Oriental scholar of Europe who has made the language, the 
history, and the literature of India his study, that the story of 
the demi-god Christna, born of a virgin, worshiped by shep¬ 
herds; who gathered a band of disciples around him, who 
performed many miracles, including healing the sick, restoring 
the deaf and the blind, and raising the dead, who was executed 
by his enemies, and either crucified or impaled on a tree, was 
all taught, and believed, and sung, and recorded, in India, many 
centuries before the dawn of the Christian era. To deny the 
originality of the story of Christna to the Hindoos would bo 


CHRISTNA. 


37 


to deny India her literature, her religion, and her antiquity, 
all of which stand better attested than those of any other 
nationality. Jacolliot, who spent considerable time in India 
examining her ancient literature, exclaims: “To suppress 
Christna, would be to suppress India.” We shall leave it with 
our readers, in comparing these two systems of Christna -ianity 
and Christ- ianity, to decide for themselves which is the origi¬ 
nal, and which the plagiarism. 

It cannot be denied that modern Hindoos have become 
degenerated, so far as the high moral standard of their religion 
and literature is concerned; they have forgotten much of 
their primitive excellence and the purity of Christna’s life and 
teachings; but their degeneracy is not wholly the result of 
ignorance; they have perfect knowledge of their dogmas and 
the grand principles formerly inculcated in their religious 
system. They have substituted miserable superstitions and 
practices in place of their former exalted philosophies; and in 
place of adoring one God only, they have deserted him to 
follow after workers of miracles, angels, incarnations, saints, 
devas and richis. This retrogradation is largely to be attributed 
to a cunning and designing priesthood, which has been the 
heaviest curse that unfortunate country has been compelled 
to sustain. 

Upon this subject Jacolliot speaks as follows: “ Crushed in 
their poverty, their weakness, their vices and their actual 
decrepitude under memories of the past, with some very rare 
exceptions, they but divide among them an inheritance of 
immense pride, which harmonizes but sadly with their degra¬ 
dation and their inutility. These people have no longer either 
dignity or self-sespect, and long ago would this Brahmin caste 
have disappeared under public contempt had not India been 
India, that is, the country par excellence, of immobility. If 
their power over the masses is still great, intelligent people of 
the higher castes, without avowing it however, consider them 
no longer in any other light than as vagabonds, whom they 
are obliged by prejudice to protect and support. 

“ Ramble of an evening through town and country, approach 
wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet and tom-tom, it 
is a birth, a marriage, or the puberty of a young girl that is 


38 


CHRISTNA. 


being celebrated. Look under the veranda and on the stairs of 
the house, those ragged beggars who squall and distort them¬ 
selves ; those are Brahmins who come to eat the rice that has 
been prepared in honor of the ceremony. This tribute is their 
due, and they levy it upon all classes of society; not a family 
festival, nor public fete can take place without it, and it is 
customary for them to carry off the dishes in which they have 
been served.” 

We see in this picture the natural termination of priestcraft 
when joined with heredity and caste. The following of false 
theories and dogmas must ultimately lead to this result in all 
cases. In this country, where the avocation is not inherited, 
the priesthood will hardly sink so low, for when it is no longer 
remunerative, nor conducive to respect and influence, it will 
be discarded without hesitation. It is to be hoped science is 
destined to gradually take the place of superstition, and that 
the instructors of the people will teach the living truths of 
science instead of the antiquated fallacies of superstition. 

The worshipers of Christna firmly believed that before the 
grand dissolution of all things at the end of the world, a mil¬ 
lennium, or a reign of good over the evil, will take place, at 
which time Christna will appear again in power and glory. 
Bamatsariar, the learned scholar and commentator on the 
sacred books of Oriental nations, writes thus: “Some time 
before the destruction of all that exists, the struggle between 
good and evil must re-commence on earth, and the evil spirits 
who, at their first creation, rebelled in heaven against the 
authority of Brahma, will present themselves for a final strug¬ 
gle to dispossess God of his power and recover their liberty. 
Then will Christna again come upon earth to overthrow the 
Prince of Backshasas, who, under the form of a horse, and 
ailed by all evil spirits, will cover the globe with ruin and 
with carnage.” 

In connection, Jacolliot thus comments: “This belief is 
general in India; there is not a Hindoo, to whatever caste he 
belongs, not a Brahmin, that does not consider it as an article 
of faith. The priests have even consecrated a sacrifice, the 
‘Aswameda,’ that is, the sacrifice of a horse, to the future 
Victory of the son of the Virgin Devanaguy.” 


BUDDHA. 


39 


BUDDHA. 


For many centuries Brahminism had been the supreme 
religion in India. The Brahmins, the priesthood of that 
country, were an exclusive caste, and the office or position 
came to them by hereditary transmission. Their numbers 
were great, their exactions upon the lower classes were 
onerous; the burdens which they laid upon the people were 
heavy to be borne. They were proud and arrogant; they 
demanded not only reverence, but tribute from those below 
them. Although they were learned themselves, like most of 
the priests mankind has submissively obeyed and supported, 
it suited their purpose to keep their vassals — the masses—in 
ignorance and subjection. Corruptions and superstitions inev¬ 
itably crept into the religion that in its origin was grand and 
exalted. The Brahmins were only men, and they possessed 
the cunning and the artifices of men. Various devices were 
used to increase their power over the lower classes. 

The evil effects of this state of things increasing, genera¬ 
tion after generation, induced an unfortunate and deplorable 
•condition of society. The Brahmin aristocracy, and the rule of 
caste, ever curses to the Hindoo nation, came to be unmiti¬ 
gated evils. Their religion degenerated; the priests and the 
people became degraded and depraved. A reformer was needed 
to remove the vices and corruptions that had gradually and 
insidiously crept into the great and sole religion of that 
country. At length one arose. His name was Buddha. He 
was to the Brahminical religion what Jesus was afterwards 
to Judaism. He condemned the corruptions and excesses 
that had so burdened the people. Wherever his influence 
extended he removed the oppressive rule of caste, and inaug¬ 
urated a purer religion and a more democratic form of gov¬ 
ernment. 

While he was indisputably one of the greatest and most 
distinguished characters which earth numbers among her chil- 


40 


BUDDHA. 


dren, and as the influence he exercised was, perhaps, greater 
than that of any other person who lived before him, very 
extravagant claims were set up in reference to him by his fol¬ 
lowers and admirers. It is claimed that, centuries before his 
advent, remarkable predictions were made of his coming. Let 
the following Chinese prophecies of this great incarnation of 
deity serve as samples: 

One thousand and twenty-nine years before Christ, in the 
twenty-fourth year of the reign of Tehoa Wang, Emperor of 
China, on the eighth day of the moon, a light from the South¬ 
west illuminated the palace of that monarch. He summoned' 
the most skilful sages to solve the meaning of this splendor. 
They showed him books wherein it was prophesied that such 
signs would be seen when a great saint should be born in the’ 
West, and that one thousand years after his birth h'.s religion 
would spread into China. Sixty-five years after Christ, 
according to another Chinese account, a man ten feet high, of 
the color of gold, and glittering like the sun, appeared in a. 
dream to Ming-ti, then emperor, and said: “My religion will 
be spread over these parts.” Again the sages were consulted. 
They turned to the annals of the empire and showed that this 
dream corresponded with the prophecy read to Tehao Wang 
a thousand years "%efore. He at once despatched messengers to 
India in search of the Holy One, with instructions not to 
return until they found him. These ambassadors discovered 
the disciples of Buddha, and returned with his sacred books 
and teachers of his doctrines. Five centuries later and there 
were three thousand temples in the Chinese empire conse¬ 
crated to the worship of Buddha. Sovereigns surrendered their 
sceptres to devote themselves entirely to the new faith. 

Buddha Sakia Mouni, from whom the Buddhists derive their 
name and religion, was born, according to the Mongolian records, 
two thousand one hundred and thirty-four years before the 
Christian era: but the Chinese contend it was one thousand and 
twenty-nine years. The learned generally agree that the Chinese- 
date is the most correct. His statues found in the gigantic,, 
antique temples of India, prove that the sect prevailed at a ver y 
remote period. Hindoo writers relate that he was the planet 
Mercury, born of the Moon and the bright star Aldebaran, and 


BUDDHA. 


41 


that he descended to our earth and took a human form. The 
words Buddha and Mouni were added to his real name Sakia, 
as titles, both signifying a wise and holy saint. The best scholars 
of Europe regard him as having been a great reformer and sage. 
His worshipers believe him to have been a divine personage who 
appeared upon earth for the instruction and salvation of men. 
His mother was a virgin named Maia, who, it is claimed, con¬ 
ceived him from a ray of light. His birth is thus recorded: “ It 
was at the close of the Dwaper Tug, that he who is omnipresent 
and everlastingly to be contemplated, the Supreme Being, the 
Eternal One, the Divinity worthy to be adored, appeared in this 
ocean of natural beings, with a portion of his divine nature.” 
Wonderful lights are said to have been seen at his birth, and the 
sacred Ganges, rose and fell in a marvelous manner. 

According to tradition, he belonged to the same royal caste 
as • Christna during his earthly existence; his mother being 
married to a Rajah. In a cave of Islamabad, a silver plate was 
found, upon which was written an inscription, stating that a 
celebrated saint living in the forest was made acquainted, 
through inspiration, that the incarnation of Vishnu, called the 
Preserver in the Hindoo Trinity, had just appeared at the house 
of the Rajah whom Maia had married; and that flying through 
the air to the house, he said: “ I come hither to see the new-born 
child.” Upon beholding the babe he declared him to be an 
avatar who had come to introduce a new religion into the world. 

At the age of sixteen years Sakia married a maiden named Ila, 
in order to fulfill the requirement of the custom of the country. 
After a son had been born to him, he renounced his princely 
rank, and went to live the life of an anchorite. He took up his 
abode in a wild forest infested with lions and tigers. There 
amidst the noble trees and fragrant flowers he passed his time in 
the practice of the most rigid austerities. It is said that he 
covered his body with thousands of matches, which he lighted; 
that he drove sharp nails into -his flesh, and that he went into 
a fiery furnace; that he spent six years in silent contemplation, 
during which he resisted manifold temptations sent to try him. 

His worshipers believe that during this time, five Holy Scrip¬ 
tures descended to him, that he became endowed with the gift of 
prophecy, and that he could alter the course of nature whenever 


42 


BUDDHA. 


he chose. They claim that he was a heavenly spirit, dwelling in 
regions of light and beauty, and who, of his own free grace and 
mercy, left Paradise and came down to earth because of his 
compassion for the sins and sufferings of the race. He sought to 
lead mankind into better ways and to mitigate their miseries and 
expiate their crimes by taking their punishment upon himself. 
Buddha not only inflicted terrible penances upon himself, but he 
voluntarily endured the punishment which others had justly 
incurred by their guilty conduct. So great was his compassion 
that, as claimed by his disciples, he even descended into the 
hells, to suffer himself, in place of the souls in torment there. 
Many disciples repaired to him in the silent depths of the forest. 

Tradition says that he taught, as a secret doctrine, that all 
things came from nothing, and would finally return to nothing. 

A charge of Atheism has been made against him by reason of 
this. What he really taught was, that after an immense interval 
of time, the Universe, and even Brahma himself, would be 
absorbed in the original Source of Being. Buddhists name this 
the Void, Nirvana, or state of endless rest—the highest concep¬ 
tion of bliss they entertain. 

Buddha introduced all his precepts and doctrines to Maha- 
kaya, a Brahmin of Central India, a short time before his death. 

His followers say that his departure from this world was thus: 

His whole nature having attained to complete absorption in the 
Divine Being, he ascended to celestial regions without dying. 

To this day they point out marks upon the rocks of a high ' 
mountain, which they claim to have been the last impression of 
his footsteps upon this earth. In a temple of Ceylon is a tooth 
which is said to have been his. It is religiously preserved in a 
golden case set with gems and this case is enclosed within four 
other cases, each covered with the costliest jewels. It is wor¬ 
shiped with the profoundest reverence, and long pilgrimages 
are made by his devotees to get a glimpse of it. 

“The Son of Maia,”“The Benevolent One,” “Lord of the 
Earth,” Dispenser of Grace,” Savior of all Creatures,” and 
“Lion of the Bace of Sakia,” were some of the numerous titles 
bestowed upon him. He died at the age of seventy-nine. By 
offering prayers in his name, his worshipers expect to be 
rewarded with the felicities of Paradise, and to finally be 


BUDDHA. 


43 


united with him as the Source of Life. These prayers abound 
in such expressions as these: “Thou who art celebrated by a 
thousand names, and under various forms, I adore thee in the 
shape of Buddha! Be propitious, O most high God!” 

The religion of Buddha is the most important that was ever 
taught among men. His was the most celebrated of all the 
Eastern sects, and the most extensively embraced. Its doctrines 
and ceremonies were introduced into many nations, and varied 
somewhat according to the prevailing ideas and customs of 
different countries. But though varying in detail, the prominent 
features of Buddhism have been at all times and everywhere the 
same. It has always inculcated belief in One Invisible Source of 
Being, sometimes called the Supreme Intelligence, sometimes 
called the Yoid. All things in the Universe emanated from him, 
and into him will eventually return. Not only will rudimentary 
worlds like this be destroyed, but even the celestial spheres 
where superior spirits dwell, will pass through like revolutions, 
and all the dwellers therein pass into other forms. After count¬ 
less cycles the time will at last come when the Universe, and 
even the deities themselves, will be merged in the Original 
Source whence they came. Then new worlds will succeed, which 
will again be destroyed. Only those souls, who, through perfect 
holiness have become one with the Supreme Being, are exempted 
from this perpetual, ever-revolving change. 

Buddha is said to have appeared four times in preceding 
worlds before he descended to this. His most common title was 
“The Savior of Men.” The object of his mission was to with¬ 
draw spirits from the illusions and engrossments of the material 
world, to instruct those who were straying from the right path, 
and to expiate their sins by his own sufferings. His worshipers 
believe that he has repeatedly assumed human form, and that 
repeated incarnations of his spirit will take place, until the 
world will be restored to order and happiness. Buddhists 
believe in the pre-existence of souls, and that material bodies 
are merely transient images. The physical form is but a 
mould, which, like metal, is dissolved into the mass but to be 
re-moulded into other forms. Therefore, they never say a man 
is dead, but that “his soul has emigrated.” They consider 
the connection of the soul with the body as a punishment; 


44 


BUDDHA. 


and they hold that it is necessary to despise the body and the 
outward world in order to achieve holiness and b come saints. 
Souls are rewarded in Paradise or punished in regions of 
torment, exactly according to the amount of their deserts,, 
before they enter some mortal form. Buddhistic theologians 
depict these heavens and hells with all the luxurious extrava¬ 
gance of the Eastern imagination. The inhabitants of the 
lower regions are condemned to all degrees of miserable 
transmigration, proportioned to their evil deeds. In the abodes 
of .bliss above, the saints are glorified and rewarded according 
to their purity. But all the spheres, both high and low, are 
subject to the eternal revolutions of destruction and re-crea¬ 
tion, though the intervals between these will be so immense 
as to seem like eternity. 

Buddhists have been distinguished from all other sects the 
world has known by their abomination of bloody sacrifices. 
Indeed, they carry their tenderness toward animals to an 
extreme. Their doctrines likewise cultivate a charitable 
disposition among men. Considering moral evil more of a. 
misfortune than a crime, they feel more compassion than 
hatred or contempt toward sinners. 

Eight of the precepts of moral law in their Sacred Books 
are as follows: 

1. “Thou shalt not kill, even the smallest creature.” 

2. “ Thou shalt not appropriate to thyself what belongs to* 
another.” 

3. “Thou shalt not infringe the laws of chastity.” 

4. “ Thou shalt not lie.” 

5. “Thou shalt not calumniate.” 

6. “Thou shalt not speak of injuries.” 

7. “Thou shalt not excite quarrels, by repeating the words 
of others.” 

8. “Thou shalt not hate.” 

This religion exercised an influence over the morals of 
mankind superior to any and all others. Instituted more 
than a thousand years before Christianity, it spread through 
foreign countries with such rapidity, although peaceful in its 
progress, that it came to be generally spoken of n? “ tha 
religion of the Vanquisher.” 


BUDDHA. 


45 


There are traditions preserved in many countries concerning 
the holiness, benevolence, and miraculous power of the first 
Buddhistic missionaries. Eighty thousand of these went forth 
from Hindoostan to other lands. It is the only religion that 
has never been propagated by the sword. Its successful 
diffusion is entirely due to the influence of its peaceful and 
persevering devotees. It is more extensively adopted than 
any religion ever propagated among the children of men. 
One-third of the human race are its votaries to-day. It 
prevails in China, Japan, Thibet, Siam, Burmah, Ceylon, and a 
large portion of Tartary. In some countries the common era 
is the death of Buddha; in others they date from the intro¬ 
duction of his religion. Pilgrims from many lands visit 
Benares and the Holy Cities of India, which they revere as 
having been the dwelling-places of Buddha, and the fountain 
heads of their religion. 

Subjoined are some of the truly remarkable teachings of 
Buddha: 

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it 
is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. 
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows 
him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the 
carriage. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, 
happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. 
Bet the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult 
to perceive, very artful, and rush wherever they list.” 

“As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion 
will break through an unreflecting mind.” 

“ The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights 
in the next. He delights, he rejoices, when he sees the purity 
of his own work.” 

“ The evil-doer suffers in this world, and he suffers in the 
next. He suffers when he thinks of the evil he has done. 
He suffers more when going in the evil path.” 

“ Reflection is the path to immortality, thoughtlessness the 
path to death. Those who reflect do not die, those who are 
thoughtless are as if dead already.” 

“As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the 
flower, or its color or fragrance, so let the sage dwell on earth.” 


46 


BUDDHA. 


“Like a beautiful flower, full of color but without perfume, 
are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act 
accordingly; but like a beautiful flower, full of color and full of 
perfume, are the fruitful words of him who acts accordingly.” 

“As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people 
falter not amidst praise or blame.” 

“ If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand 
men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of 
conquerors. One’s own self, conquered, is better than all 
other people; not even a god could change into defeat the 
victory of a man who has vanquished himself, and always 
lives under restraint. By oneself the evil is done, by oneself 
one suffers, by oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is 
purified’. Purity and impurity belong to oneself; no one can 
purify another.” 

“ Cut out the love of self like an Autumn lotus, with thy 
hand. Cherish the road to peace.” 

“Better than sovereignty, better than going to heaven, 
better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of the 
first step in holiness.” 

“He whose evil deeds are covered by good deeds, brightens 
up this world like the moon freed from clouds.” 

“If a man commits a sin, let him not do it again; let him 
not delight in sin; pain is the outcome of evil.” 

“If a man does what is good, let him do it again; let him 
delight in it; happiness is the outcome of good.” 

“Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, it 
will not come over me. Even by the falling of water-drops a 
water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he 
gathers it little by little.” 

“Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It 
will not benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops a 
water-pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even 
if he gathers it little by little.” 

“Let a man overcome anger with love, let him overcome 
evil by good, let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the 
liar by truth.” 

“He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him 
I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.” 


BUDDHA. 


4? 


“There is no fire like passion, no shark like hatred, no 
snare like folly, no torrent like greed.” 

“The sages who injure nobody, and who always control 
their bodies, will go to the unchangeable place, where they 
will suffer no more.” 

“Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one’s 
mind, that is the teaching of the Awakened. Not to blame, 
not to strike, to live restrained under the law, to be moderate 
in eating, and to dwell on the highest thoughts, this is the 
teaching of the Awakened.” 

“Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we 
enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a 
spot in the whole world where a man might be freed from 
an evil deed. Not nakedness, not plaited hair, not diet, not 
fasting, not lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, nor 
sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome 
desires.” 

“If a man has transgressed one law, and spoken lies, and 
scoffs at another world, there is no evil he will not do.” 

There is a striking resemblance between the character of 
Buddha and that attributed to Jesus. Both are claimed by 
their followers to have devoted their lives to the salvation 
and happiness of the human race. Both were ascetics; both 
denied themselves worldly pleasures, and both evinced the 
strongest and purest love for mankind. Their precepts, incul¬ 
cations and injunctions present a marked similarity. As to 
which is the older of the two personages, and the systems they 
founded, there is not room for doubt. It is well understood 
that Central Asia has been the source of the languages, the 
literature and the religions of the world. Sir William Jones, 
Prof. Max Muller, Jacolliot and other learned Oriental scholars 
bear abundant testimony to this fact. Max Muller says; 
“However bold the assertion may sound, that all the languages, 
of mankind have an Oriental origin, true it is that all religions, 
like the suns, have risen from the East.” 

In speaking of the religion of Buddha, Prof. Max Muller 
thus remarks: “ It has been the peculiar late of the religion 
of Buddhism, that among all the so-called false or heaths 
enish religions, it almost alone has been praised by all and 


48 


BUDDHA. 


every body, for its elevated, pure, and humanizing character. 
One hardly trusts one’s eyes on seeing Catholic and Protestant 
missionaries vie with each other in their praises of Buddha; 
and even the attention of those who are indifferent to all that 
concerns religion, must be arrested for a moment, when they 
learn from statistical accounts that no religion has exercised 
eo powerful an influence on the diminution of crime as the 
old, simple doctrine of the Ascetic of Kapilavastu.” 

In support of the position thus advanced, the Professor 
quotes Christian authorities as follows: The Bishop of Ram- 
atha, the Apostolic Vicar of Ava and Pegu, in comparing 
Buddhism and Christianity, says: “There are many moral pre¬ 
cepts equally commanded and enforced in common by both 
creeds. It will not be rash to assert that most of the moral 
truths prescribed by the gospel are to be met with in the 
Buddhistic scriptures.” Bishop Begandet is thus quoted: “ In 
reading the particulars of the life of Buddha, it is impossible 
not to feel reminded of many circumstances relating to our 
Savior’s life, as sketched by the Evangelists. It may be 
.said in favor of Buddhism, that no philosophico-religious sys¬ 
tem has ever upheld to an equal degree the notions of a 
savior and deliverer, and the necessity of his mission for pro¬ 
curing the salvation of man, in a Buddhistic sense. The role 
of Buddha, from beginning to end, is that of a deliverer, who 
preaches a law designed to secure to man the deliverance from 
all the miseries he is laboring under.” There is not a shadow 
of a doubt that Buddhism is from five hundred to a thousand 
years older than Christianity. If one is borrowed from the 
other, which is the copy? 

To-day the adoration of Buddha is celebrated with incense 
of sandal wood and odors of flowers by untold millions in 
the Eastern World. No other faith has had such a following, 
none ever spread so quickly, and no other name is held in 
such reverence. It has been the current religion of the half 
of earth for thirty centuries, and thus far gives, to outward 
seeming, no sign of dissolution or decay. 


ZVK OAST ER. 


49 


ZOROASTER. 

“O Just Judge, there is but one Zoroaster; the immortal 
^Zoroaster, the Living Star. The law, excellent, right, and just, 
which Ormuzd has given to his people, is certainly, and with¬ 
out doubt, that which Zoroaster has brought.” It is with these 
words that Persian priests precede the ceremonies of their 
religion. The great religious teacher of the Persians, the 
“blessed Zoroaster,” as they call him, was a prince, or of high 
birth. His name was a royal one in the Chaldean lists of 
Berosus. Confused and contradictory accounts are given of his 
birth. The learned Heesen thinks that he lived at a period 
interior to the commencement of the Median Empire, at least 
eight centuries before the Christian era. Pliny, following the 
positive affirmation of Aristotle, declared that Zoroaster flour¬ 
ished six thousand years before Plato. Hermippus, a man of 
great erudition, places him five thousand years before the 
Trojan war. Meoyle, Rhode, Yolney, Gibbon and other reliable 
scholars concur in throwing him back into a vast antiquity. 

But notwithstanding this chronological confusion, it is cer¬ 
tain there was a man called Zoroaster, who was eminent for 
his knowledge of astronomy; a man of marvelous wisdom, and 
who was the writer of the Zend Avesta, the sacred and infallible 
Book of the Persians. The religion founded by him prevailed 
throughout Persia in the time of Socrates; and mutilated 
nopies of this ancient Bible still remain. 

According to tradition, a good spirit appeared to his mother 
just before she gave birth to him, and said to her; “Fear 
nothing! Ormuzd will protect this infant from the Evil Spirits 
which are seeking to destroy him. He has sent him as a prophet 
to the people. The world is waiting for him.” It is said that 
when he was born, wicked spirits threw him into a flaming 
fire; but his mother found him sleeping there, as if it had been 
£L pleasant bath. It is further related, that after having lived 
twenty years in the wilderness on cheese that never grew 


50 


ZOROASTER. 


stale, he retired to a solitary mountain and devoted himself 
to the attainment of perfect holiness by silent contemplation. 
Tradition reports that fire from heaven one day descended 
visibly upon this mountain, and that the king of Persia, 
attended by his court, went up and worshiped the sacred flame. 
Zoroaster brought down the Book of Laws through the fire 
unharmed. This book was the Zend Avesta, which signified the 
Living Word. This is believed by his followers to be a portion 
of the Primaeval Word, which spake creation into existence, 
every syllable of which possesses an inherent virtue. 

The Persians considered him a divine messenger sent to 
redeem men from their evil ways. After having invoked the 
spirit of the constellation Orion, that he might be consumed by 
celestial fire, it is affirmed that he was caught up to heaven on 
a thunderbolt. Zoroaster taught the existence of one Eternal 
Essence, supreme and incomprehensible. Ormuzd, the King of 
Light, sprung from this Essence, called the “ Creator,” the 
“God of Goodness and Truth,” the “Just Judge,” the “Eter¬ 
nal Source of Sunshine,” and the “All-Seeing Sovereign.” 

In the Zend Avesta he is described as “sitting on the throne 
of the good and the perfect, crowned with rays, in regions of 
light ineffable. His throne is surrounded by resplendent spirits 
called Amshaspands, the Immortal Holy Ones, who convey to 
him the prayers of inferior spirits, and of men, for whom they 
are models of purity and perfection. The next inferior series 
of spirits served as messengers between man and the superior 
spirits, presiding over the sun, moon, and planets, and protect¬ 
ing the earth from evil influences. The most numerous order 
of spirits were called Fervors, and were supposed to be the 
guardians of plants and animals, men and stars. One of these 
spirits attends every mortal through life, and protects him from 
evil. The sun was called Khor, “The Eye of Ormuzd.” He 
was represented as riding round the earth in a celestial chariot, 
and completing the circuit in three hundred and sixty-five 
days. A trumpet always sounded at sunrise from the royal 
pavilion. From the minutest mundane thing up to the throne of 
the Eternal Ormuzd, from atoms to astral worlds, there was a 
chain of spiritual agencies, to whom the Universe was intrusted. 
All the suns and stars were animated with souls, and every- 


ZOROASTER. 


rn 

thing upon them partook of the character of the souls which 
presided over them. 

“ God conferred sovereignty upon the sun, and squadrons of 
stars were his army,” wrote a Persian poet. “ The spirits of 
the stars were benevolent guardians of men, and of all inferior 
creatures. They were endowed with intelligence superior to 
the Spirit of our Earth. Their vision extended through the 
Universe. They knew what would happen in the future, and 
could reveal it to those who understood their signs. The des¬ 
tinies of men were intimately connected with their motions, 
and therefore it was important to know under the influence of 
what star a human soul made its advent into this world. 
Astrologers swarmed in the palace of the king, and were con¬ 
sulted on all important occasions. Persians h^ld the stars in 
such affectionate reverence that whenever they looked at one 
they kissed their hand to it.” [Prog. Belig. Ideas.] 

According to Zoroaster, Ormuzd created the world in six 
succe sive periods. He first stretched out the firmament with 
all its starry hosts; he next created water; third, earth; fourth, 
trees; fifth, animals; and sixth, and last, man. When he had 
finished the work of creation, he devoted the seventh period to 
a festival with the good spirits. Ormuzd breathed the breath 
of life into a pair of closely-intert -ined stems of the Eibas tree, 
and they became the first man and the first woman. Heavenly 
happiness would have been theirs had they kept themselves 
pure in thought, and word, and deed. But Arimanes, the Evil 
Spirit, cried aloud from his realm of shadows: “ O, men, wor¬ 
ship us!” The woman gave a libation to the spirits of dark¬ 
ness, and thus the world was brought under the dominion of 
evil. Tigers and wolves, serpents and venomous insects were 
created to harass and destroy the good animals. Arimanes, 
the Prince of Evil, assumed the shape of a serpent, and went 
gliding about the world tempting the unwary souls of the 
children of men. He incited his subjects to sensuality, slander 
and revenge, and introduced discord and death into all the 
departments of the Universe. Becoming jealous of the First- 
Born, and manifesting pride and envy, Arimanes was con¬ 
demned by the Eternal One to remain three thousand years in 
the realms of night, where no ray of light could penetrate. 


52 


ZOROASTER. 


Owing to the proneness of men to follow the lead of the bad 
Arimanes against the good Ormuzd, he was finally enabled to 
gain the ascendency on earth, which he would keep for three 
thousand years. 

The duration of time was limited to twelve thousand years. 
During some periods the bad spirit would prevail; during other 
periods the good spirit would have the mastery. But good 
would ultimately triumph. The whole world will finally become 
converted to the worship of Zoroaster. Men will cease to eat 
meat, and live on milk and fruit; afterwards they will be able 
to sustain themselves on water alone, until at last they shall 
sustain life without taking any nourishment whatever. 

In the fullness of time, the Holy One will appear, judge the 
wicked and the good, and restore the earth to its pristine 
purity. All the world will unite in the worship of Zoroaster, 
and universal happiness and peace prevail forevermore. Every 
one will be judged according to his works. The good will weep 
over the wicked, and they will weep over themselves. A star 
with a tail will come in contact with the earth and set it on 
fire. The heat will be such as to melt metals and make them 
flow down from high mountains, like rivers over the earth. 
These will be like baths of warm milk to the good, but like 
torrents of lava to the wicked. But ultimately they are des¬ 
tined to come forth purified through fire, glorious and happy. 
Even Arimanes and his imps of darkness, will finally be 
brought under the overpowering influence of the good spirits, 
and will be fr ely forgiven by the omnipotent Ormuzd. 

These redeemed spirits will join mankind in a universal 
chorus of praise to the Eternal Source of light and blessing. 
Eathers and sons, sisters and friends, will unite to aid each 
other in good works. They will cast no shadows; all speak 
one language, and live together in one harmonious society. 
The level and fruitful earth will be clothed with renovated 
beauty, and innocence and joy will everywhere prevail. The 
following is a summary of the moral teachings of Zoroaster: 

“It is the duty of children to obey their x>arents; for wives 
to obey their husbands.” 

“Treat old age with great reverence and tenderness.” 

“He who sows the ground with dilligence, acquires a greater 


ZOROASTER. 


53 


stock of religious merit than he could gain by ten thousand 
inrayers in idleness.” 

“Cultivate the soil, drain marshes, and destroy dangerous 
creatures.” 

“ Multiply domestic animals, nourish them, and treat them 
gently.” 

“Do not allow thyself to be carried away by anger. Angry 
words and scornful looks are sins. To strike a man, or vex 
him with words, is a sin. Even the intention to strike another, 
merits punishment. Opposition to peace is a sin. Reply to 
thine enemy with gentleness.” 

“Avoid everything calculated to injure others. Have no 
companionship with a man who injures his neighbor.” 

“ Be not envious, avaricious, proud or vain. Envy and 
jealousy are the work of evil spirits. Haughty thoughts and 
thirst for gold are sins.” 

“To refuse hospitality, and not to succor the poor, are sins.” 

“Be very scrupulous to observe the truth in all things.” 

“Fornication and immodest looks are sins. Avoid licentious¬ 
ness, because it is one of the readiest means to give evil spirits 
power over body and soul. Strive, therefore, to keep pure in 
body and mind, and thus prevent the entrance of evil spirits 
who are always trying to gain possession of man. To think 
evil is a sin.” 

“Contend constantly against evil, morally and physically, 
internally and externally. Strive in every way to diminish the 
power of Arimanes and destroy his works. If a man has done 
this, he may fearlessly meet death, well assured that radiant 
Izeds will lead him across the luminous bridge into a paradise 
of eternal happiness. But though he has been brave in battle, 
killed wild beasts, and fought with all manner of external 
evils, if he has neglected to combat evil within himself, he has 
reason to fear that Arimanes and his Devs will seize him and 
carry him to Duzakh, where he will be punished according to 
his sins; not to satisfy the vengeance of Ormuzd, but because, 
having connected himself with evil, this is the only means of 
becoming purified therefrom, so as to be capable of enjoying 
happiness at a future period.’* 

“Every man who is pure in thoughts, words, and actions. 


54 


ZOROASTER. 


will go to celestial regions. Every man who is evil in thoughts, 
words, or actions, will go to the place of the wicked.” 

“All good thoughts, words, and actions, are the productions 
of the celestial world.” 

The following are samples of the prayers with which the 
Zend Avesta is filled: 

“I address my prayer to Ormuzd, Creator of all things; 
who always has been, who is, and who will be forever. Who is 
wise and powerful; w r ho made the great arch of heaven, the 
sun, moon, stars, winds, clouds, water, earth, fire, metals, 
animals, and men; whom Zoroaster adored. Zoroaster, who 
brought to the world knowledge of the law; who knew by 
natural intelligence, and by the ear, what ought to be done, all 
that has been, all that is, and all that will be; the science of 
sciences, the excellent word, by which souls pass the luminous 
and radiant bridge, separate themselves from the evil regions, 
and go to light and holy dwellings, full of fragrance. O, 
Creator, I obey thy laws. I think, act, and speak according to 
thy orders. I separate myself from all sin. I do good works 
according to my power. I adore thee with purity of thought, 
word, and action. I pray to Ormuzd, who recompenses good 
works, who delivers unto the end all those who obey his laws. 
Grant that I may arrive at Paradise, where all is fragrance, 
light, and happiness.” 

Here is another invocation for health, truth and goodness: 

“ I invoke and worship health and goodness. I invoke and 
worship the male and female of animals, water, earth, trees, 
and store-houses where corn is kept. I adore this earth and 
sky, the stars, the moon, the sun; light, which had no begin¬ 
ning, and is increate, and also the works of the holy and 
celestial Being. I invoke and worship the mountains, deposito¬ 
ries of the wisdom given by Ahura-Mazda, radiant with purity, 
perfectly radiant, and the splendor of kings given by Ahura- 
Mazda, and their unborrowed brightness. I invoke those who 
are holy, and those who are pure. I invoke and worship the 
powerful spirits of pure men. Who purely invokes the truths, 
he has the essence of the suimeme soul; hence is he inspired 
to the culture of the soil. Who honors truth in word and 
deed, O, Mazda, he best serves and worships thee. Come to 


ZOROASTER. 


55 


me, ye high realities. Grant me your immortality, your dura¬ 
tion of possession forever. Let me become those things that I 
have longed for. Grant me the gift of long life. May none of 
you withhold it, since it is dedicated to the redemption of that 
world which is thine.” 

The following has reference to the Beginning: 

“This will I ask: Who is the first Father and Progenitor of 
Truth ? Who laid the path for the sun and stars ? Who caused 
the moon to wax and wane, but thou ? All this would I know; 
other things are comprehensible to me. This will I ask thee: 
Who made the earth and the sky above it? Who is in the 
wind and storm, that they so swiftly run? This will I ask 
thee: Who made the useful light and the darkness, by their 
alternations bringing labor and rest? Who the morning, mid¬ 
day, and night, which constantly remind him that knows the 
divine revealings of his obligations ? This, too, will I ask thee: 
Who made the high land with its riches? Who forms con¬ 
stantly the fine son from the father, as by the weaver’s art?” 

The following are selected from the Oracles of Zoroaster: 

“To the slow mortal the gods are swift.” 

‘ Enlarge not thy destiny.” 

“ The soul is a bright fire, and by the power of the Father 
remains immortal, and is mistress of life.” 

“ The parental mind hath sown symbols through the world.” 

“There is something intelligible which it behooves thee to 
apprehend with the flower of the mind.” 

Zoroaster was the great religious chieftain of Persia. His 
system was eminently spiritual, abounding in revelations, 
prophecies, and miracles, in visions and angelic ministrations. 
The Priests of Persia were called Magi, signifying men conse¬ 
crated to the worship of God. They consider Zoroaster the 
highest of prophets. His followers are generally styled Fire- 
Worshipers by Europeans. But they say they merely adore 
fire as the representative of an invisible spirit, whom they call 
Yerd. They keep a fire burning in their consecrated places, 
which they believe was kindled by Zoroaster more than four 
thousand years ago. Upon their altars they have spheres to 
represent the sun. When the sun rises, these orbs light up, 
and turn around with great noise. The followers of Zoroaster 


56 


ZORO ASTER. 


have ever been a harmless, industrious people, rigorous in 
morals, and honest in their dealings. A spirit of benevolence 
pervades their maxims. Their “Sacred Word” declares that 
there is no greater crime than to buy grain and keep it till it 
becomes dear.” They take cheerful views of death. To the 
good it is only a passage into Paradise; to the wicked it is the 
beginning of penances that will finally atone for their sins, and 
from which the living can help to deliver them by their 
prayers. When a man commits crime, it is ordained that rela¬ 
tives and friends should perform pious rites, and make dona¬ 
tions to the poor, in expiation of his faults, because they 
believe such observances will diminish his period of pun¬ 
ishment. 

Such, in short, is a summary of the sayings of the great 
originator of a system of religion, which, ante-dating the 
Christian system by centuries, if not millenniums, has held 
supreme sway over the hearts of men in the most charmed 
country beneath the bending skies; Persia, that lovely land of 
foliage and flowers, of the graceful palm, the date, and the 
silken plantains of the valley. These rich, and wise, and won¬ 
drous words, gathered in fragments from the morning lands of 
the race, sufficiently show that truth is not limited and partial, 
but that vital elements can be gathered from olden “Sacred 
Books,” from teachers, seers, anl reformers of many regions, 
and different races, to supply the need of the experiences and 
aspirations of humanity. 

“For I doubt not through the ages. 

One increasing purpose runs; 

And the thoughts of men are widened 
With the process of the suns.” 


CONFUCIUS. 


67 


CONFUCIUS. 

Inspiration, being a universal in-breathing from the Infinite 
Universe, has never been confined to any clime — to any 
century or country. In every condition of society, and among 
all peoples, great, grand enunciations of truth have blessed 
the throbbing heart of humanity. From the century-mossed 
systems of the infant world, from myriad martyred souls 
through all the generations gone, from sages and magi, priests 
and prophets, poets and philosophers, from Zoroaster and 
Zeno, Pythagoras and Plato, have streamed inspired utterances 
and splendid sayings that have enriched and brightened, 
guided and gladdened the race through all the weary ages. 
The choicest chapter in this unsealed Bible of human experi¬ 
ence, one which has shed an effulgence over more than two 
thousand years of history comes from that old wall-locked 
wonder-land, which, in its splendid nationality and isolated 
grandeur, looms up from the twilight of time —China, with 
India and Persia, the cradle-land of civilization. 

Chiefest among the Chinese sages was Kong-futse, com-^ 
monly called Confucius. He w T as born the 19th of June, 551 
B. C., at Sliamping, in the kingdom of Lu. His ancestry is 
traced back to the powerful potentates who ruled the Flowery 
Kingdom more than 2000 years B. C. It is said strange signs- 
and remarkable dreams and omens preceded his birth. In his 
boyhood he was celebrated for his seriousness. It is said he 
never manifested any taste for childish sports. Notwith¬ 
standing his ancestors had, for six generations, held offices, 
under the government, yet Confucius in his youth was quite 
poor, and was obliged to maintain himself by manual labor. At 
the age of nineteen he took a wife—he never had but one. As 
a reward for his intelligence and virtuous life, he was appointed- 
superintendent of grain and cattle in his native province, at 
the age of twenty years. He afterwards held a high rank at 
Court, but resigning his office, he proceeded to a neighboring 


58 


CONFUCIUS. 


province, and became a teacher of morals. He gathered 
around him several thousand disciples, by whom he was held 
in the highest honor and veneration. 

They declared that “ since man existed, there has never 
been one to be compared to Confucius.” “As the heavens 
cannot be scaled, even by the highest ladder, so no man can 
attain to Confucius. Were he to obtain the throne, he would 
establish the people, and they would be correct.” “He may 
be compared to heaven and earth, in their supporting, con¬ 
taining, and overshadowing all things; to the regular revolu¬ 
tions of the seasons, and the alternate shining of the sun and 
moon.” 

The above sufficiently show the transcendent merit accorded 
to him by his pupils and countrymen. Confucius inculcated 
the most formal code of etiquette. He laid down many rules 
for the regulation, not only of the conduct, but even of the 
walk and countenance. He inculcated the most respectful 
treatment of elders and superiors. He had great respect for 
parental authority, and manifested much reverence for the 
.Supreme Euler of the Universe. He believed in spirits and the 
immortality of the soul. He encouraged marriage and agricul¬ 
ture, inculcated justice and kindness among men, temperance 
and propriety in all things, and held that human nature is 
ever good and beautiful, unless darkened by ignorance, or 
^sullied by vice. 

Confucius lived seventy-three years, and passed the close of 
his life in regrets over the degeneracy of his countrymen. His 
death took place on the 11th day of the 4th month of the 
year 478 B. C. We are told that early one morning he got up, 
and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he 
moved about by his door, crooning over,— 

“The great mountain must crumble; 

The strong beam must break away like a plant, 

And the wise man wither.” 

After a little he entered the house and went to his couch, 
-saying: “My time is come to die.” So it was. After seven 
•days he expired. “So death prevailed against him and he 


CONFUCIUS. 


59 


passed; his countenance was changed, and he was sent away.’* 
Temples were erected to his memory, and sacrifices were 
offered to him at the four seasons of the year. Emperors made 
pilgrimages to his tomb. The most famous temples in the 
great empire of China, to-day, are erected to his memory. The 
mightiest monarchs of the Flowery Kingdom set the example 
of kneeling thrice before his image, each time laying their 
foreheads thrice in the dust. 

In the first year of the Christian era began the practice of 
conferring honorary designations upon the Chinese sage by 
imperial authority. He was then styled the “all complete and 
illustrious.” This was changed in 492 to “the accomplished 
sage.” This was supplanted in 1645 with “Kung, the ancient 
teacher, accomplished and illustrious, all-complete, the perfect 
sage;” from which no further alteration has been made. In 
addition to the public worship of Confucius, by offering fruits 
and vegetables on the first day of every month, there is per¬ 
formed twice a year, in the middle months of Spring and 
Autumn, a worship of peculiar solemnity. The emperor him¬ 
self attends in state at the imperial college, and after having 
knelt twice and bowed his head to the earth six times, he 
invokes the spirit of Confucius thus: “ Great art thou, O 
perfect sage! Thy virtue is full; thy doctrine is complete. 
Among mortal men there has not been thine equal. All kings 
honor thee. Thy statutes and laws have come gloriously down. 
Thou art the pattern in this imperial school.” 

His disciples erected a tent near his grave, in which they 
remained three years, offering prayers and sacrifices, and in 
mourning for him. The life of Confucius was calm and 
beautiful. The Chinese consider him superior to their greatest 
monarch, and pay religious honors to his memory to-day, as 
though but recently deceased. His descendants still inherit 
the office and title of Mandarin; and the principles of the 
illustrious sage of China, transmitted through twenty centuries, 
have become memorized by, and have permeated the most 
numerous people upon the planet. 

Anson Burlingame, at a grand banquet given a few years 
since in New York to the Chinese Embassy, spoke of the land 
of Confucius thus: “It is a land of scholars and schools; a 


GO 


CONFUCIUS. 


land of books, from the smallest pamphlet up to encyclopaedias 
of five thousand volumes. It is a land where the privileges 
are common; it is a land without caste, for they destroyed 
their feudal system two thousand and one hundred years ago, 
and they built up their great structure of civilization on the 
grand idea that the people are the source of power.” 

The following are some of Confucius’ maxims, as recorded 
by his disciples: 

“ Do unto another what you would he should do unto you, 
and do not unto another what you would not should be done 
unto you. Tliou only needest this law alone; it is the founda¬ 
tion and principle of all the rest. We cannot observe the 
necessary rules of life, if there be wanting these three virtues: 
1st. Wisdom, which makes us discern good from evil. 2d. 
Universal love, which makes us love all men who are virtu¬ 
ous. 3d. That resolution which makes us constantly persevere 
in the adherence to good, and aversion for evil.” 

“The love of the perfect man is a universal love; a love 
whose object is all mankind.” 

“ There are four rules, according to which a perfect man 
ought to square himself. 1st. He ought to j)ractice, in respect 
of his father, what he requires from his son. 2d. In the ser¬ 
vice of the State, he ought to show the same fidelity which he 
demands of those who are under him. 3d. He must act, in 
respect to his elder brother, after the same manner he would 
that his younger brother should act toward himself. 4th. He 
ought to behave himself toward his friends as he desires his 
friends should carry themselves toward him. The perfect 
man continually acquits himself of these duties, how common 
soever they may ax^pear. If you undertake an affair for 
another, manage and follow it with the same eagerness and 
fidelity as if it were your own. Always behave yourself with 
the same precaution and discretion as you would do if you were 
observed by ten eyes, and pointed out by so many hands.” 

“When the opportunity of doing a reasonable thing shall 
offer, make use of it without hesitation. If a man, although 
full of self-love, endeavored to perform good actions, behold 
him already very near that universal love which urges him 
to do good to all.” 


CONFUCIUS. 


61 


“He who persecutes a good man makes war against him¬ 
self and all mankind.” 

“The defects of parents ought not to be imputed to their 
children. If a father, by his crimes, render himself unworthy 
of being promoted to honor, the son ought not to be excluded, 
if he do not render himself unworthy. If a man shall be of 
obscure birth, his birth ought not to be his crimes.” 

“If a person has deviated from the path of integrity and 
innocence, he needs only to excite the good that remains to 
make atonement by pains and industry, and he will infallibly 
arrive at the highest state of virtue.” 

“It is not enough to know virtue; it is necessary to love it; 
but it is not sufficient to love it; it is necessary to possess it.” 

“It is impossible that he who knows not howto govern and 
reform himself and his family, can rightly govern and reform 
a people.” 

“It is the wise man only who is always pleased; virtue 
renders his spirit quiet; nothing troubles him, nothing dis¬ 
quiets him, because he practices not virtue as a reward; the 
practice of virtue is the sole recompense he expects.” 

“ Endeavor to imitate the wise, and never discourage thy¬ 
self, how laborious soever it may be; if thou canst arrive at 
thine end, the happiness thou wilt possess will recompense all 
thy pains.” 

“Always remember that thou art a man, that human nature 
is frail, and that thou mayest easily fall. But if, happening to 
forget what thou art, thou chancest to fall, be not discouraged; 
remember that thou mayest rise again; that it is in thy power 
to break the bands which join thee to thy offense, and to 
subdue the obstacles which hinder thee from walking in the 
paths of virtue. The wise man never hastens, either in his 
.studies or his words; he is sometimes, as it were, mute; but, 
when it concerns him to act, and practice virtue, he, as I may 
say, precipitates all.” 

“Labor to purify thy thoughts; if thy thoughts are not ill, 
neither will thy actions be so. The wise man has an infinity 
of pleasures.” 

“Give thy superfluities to the poor. Poverty and human 
.miseries are evils, but the bad only resent them.” 


62 


CONFUCIUS. 


“Riches and honors are good; the desire to possess them is 
natural to all men; but, if these things agree not with virtue, 
the wise man ought to condemn and renounce them. On the 
contrary, poverty and ignominy are evils; man naturally 
avoids them; if these evils attack the wise man, it is right 
that he should rid himself of them, but not by a crime.” 

“The good man employs himself only with virtue; the bad 
only with his riches. The first continually thinks upon the 
good and interest of the State; but the last thinks on what 
concerns himself.” 

“The way that leads to virtue is long, but it is the duty to 
finish this long race. Allege not for the excuse, that thou hast, 
not strength enough, that difficulties discourage thee, and that, 
thou shalt.be at last forced to stop in the midst of thy course. 
Thou knowest nothing.” 

“It is necessary, after an exact and extensive manner, to 
know the causes, properties, differences, and effects of all 
things.” 

“It is necessary to meditate in particular, on the things we 
believe we know, and to weigh everything by the weight of 
reason, with all the attentiveness of spirits, and with the 
utmost exactness whereof we are capable.” 

“ He who in his studies wholly applies himself to labor and 
exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time; and he who 
only applies himself to meditation, and neglects experimental 
exerc se, does only wander and lose himself. The first can 
never know anything exactly; and the last will only pursue 
shadows. To the mind, virtue communicates inexpressible 
beauties and perfections; to the body it produces delightful 
sensations; it affords a certain physiognomy, certain transports, 
certain ways, which infinitely please. And as it is the property 
of virtue to becalm the heart and keep the peace there, so 
this inward tranquillity and secret joy produces a certain 
serenity in the countenance; a certain air of goodness, kind¬ 
ness and reason, which attracts the esteem of the whole world.” 

“Not to correct our faults is to commit new ones.” 

“Be rigid to yourself and gentle to others, and you will 
have no enemies.” 

“ To know that a thing is right and not to do it, is weakness.’* 


CONFUCIUS. 


63 


“Have not a friend morally inferior to yourself.*’ 

“If you err, fear not to reform.” 

“ Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are, to 
me, as a floating cloud.” 

“ The superior man wishes to be slow in his words, and 
earnest in his conduct.” 

“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things 
that have had their course, it is needless to remonstrate about; 
things that are just, it is needless to blame.” 

“Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.” 

“ He who exercises government by means of his virtue, may 
be compared to the North polar star, which keeps its place, 
and all the stars turn toward it.” 

“When you have faults do not fear to abandon them.” 

“ Fix thy thoughts on duty, practice without ceasing the 
virtue of humanity, and if you have leisure, cultivate the arts.” 

“ The nature of man is upright. If in the course of his life 
he loses his natural uprightness, he removes far from him all 
happiness.” 

“Return bad treatment with equity, and recompense kind¬ 
ness with kindness.” 

“ When you have learned to live well, you will know how 
to die well.” 

The disciples of Confucius used to remark: “The doctrine 
of our master consists solely in integrity of heart, and treating 
his neighbor as he himself wished to be treated.” 

These sacred maxims of Confucius were compiled into what, 
by way of pre-eminence, the Chinese call the “Five Volumes.” 
They do not claim to be divine revelations, but are universally 
considered very sacred authority in China. They contain, not 
only moral maxims, but the fundamental law of the empire. 
They have served to preserve tranquillity in the state by their 
rigid regulation of manners, and inculcation of obedience to 
i he government. 

Mrs. Child [Progress Religious Ideas] says: “They [the 
Chinese,] preserve a tradition concerning a mysterious garden, 
where grew a tree, bearing apples of immortality, guarded by 
a winged serpent, called a dragon. They describe a primitive 
age of the world when the earth yielded abundance of deli- 


64 


CONFUCIUS 


cious fruits without cultivation, and the seasons were untroub¬ 
led by wind or storms. There was no calamity, sickness, or 
death. Men were then good without effort; for the human 
heart was in harmony with the peacefulness and beauty of 
Nature. After this happy time, men degenerated by progressive 
stages. But finally Tien-tse, a son of heaven, would be born 
into the world, do away all sin, and restore order.” 

These books of Confucius have been the basis of the moral 
and political wisdom of China for half a millennium before the 
era of Christianity. They have been committed to memory by 
every Chinese school-boy for centuries, and are to-day the 
standard literature of the most populous empire on the globe. 
In many respects Confucius was the most marvelous man of 
antiquity; and the Five Sacred Volumes of his wise and won¬ 
drous sayings constitute the grandest gospel humanity has 
ever known. Since the era of Confucius, education has been 
highly prized in the empire. One of his sayings was: “To 
lead an uninstructed people to war is to throw them away.” 
In no other country to-day is the school-master more abroad, 
and in all the schools it is Confucius who is taught. All the 
officers of the empire are required to be versed in the classics 
of Confucius. All learning is received at the fountain of Con¬ 
fucius. The king, the priest, and the people, learn of him and 
do homage to him at once. 

He had three thousand disciples during his life-time. His 
disciples are now hundreds of millions. For two thousand 
years he has reigned supreme, the undisputed teacher of the 
most populous part of earth. He is the expounder and the 
exemplifier of the maxims of the golden age of China. He was 
not only the highest embodiment of Chinese culture and excel¬ 
lence of character, but the beau ideal of humanity in its best 
estate. He stands grandly out from the world’s other sages, 
and rises above their level, as one by whom all personal worth 
was exemplified, and by whom all possible lessons of social 
virtue and political wisdom are taught; and from the birth of 
mankind till now, there has never been one more complete, 
take his career all in all, than Confucius, the sage of China. 


MENCIUS. 


65 


MENCIUS. 


Mencius, the latinized form of Meng-Tae or Meng-Tseu (who, 
•to keep in company with the Asiatic Sages, is here placed 
before several who lived prior to him), was, after Confucius, 
the most celebrated of all the Chinese philosophers, of whom 
there were a large number. He was born in the little state of 
Tsow, which was subsequently included in the kingdom of 
Xoo, and in the modern province of Shan-Toong, about four 
hundred years B. C., and was therefore a contemporary of 
Plato and Aristotle. He lost his father in early childhood. 
His mother was a woman of rare intelligence and excellence 
•of character, and she took unwearied pains in the training of 
her young son. To her was he, doubtless, greatly indebted for 
his inclination towards learning and philosophy, and also for 
that lofty sense of virtue for which he was so distinguished. 

After the death of her husband she resided for a time in 
the vicinity of a butcher’s shop, but observing that the atten¬ 
tion of her little son was attracted by the cry of the animals 
that were being slaughtered, and that he imitated the actions 
he witnessed, and fearing that his heart might become hard¬ 
ened by the frequent sight of blood and death, she removed 
to another abode. This was near a cemetery, when the child’s 
.attention was attracted to the mourners who came to weep and 
wail over the graves of the loved ones who had passed away. 
Mencius soon took pleasure in witnessing them, and in imitat¬ 
ing their conduct. This was a source of uneasiness to the 
mother, and she again resolved to change her abode so that 
her son could witness different scenes. This time she located 
near a market-place; but here the boy was attracted to the 
sales that were constantly being made, and he soon began to 
play the part of a salesman, vaunting his wares and chaffering 
with his ideal customers. The watchful and anxious mother 
was not yet satisfied, and this time she took a residence near 
n, school house, where the attention of Mencius was attracted. 


3 


66 


MENCIUS. 


by the various studies and exercises which he saw pursued in 
school, and a desire for learning was awakened in his mind. 
He soon distinguished himself for the quickness of his intel¬ 
lect, and subsequently by his earnest application to study and 
his ability to grasp the various problems presented to him. 

As an instance of the mother’s regard for truth, and her 
carefulness in imparting that only to her son, it is related of 
her, that on one occasion when he saw some butchers killing 
pigs, he questioned her what it was for. She, rather thought¬ 
lessly, replied: “ To give you food ”; and then fearing the son 
might think she had spoken untruly, she went and bought 
some of the swine-meat and cooked it for him, that he might 
not think her guilty of speaking an untruth. As an illustra¬ 
tion of the impressive manner in which she imparted moral 
lessons to his mind, it is narrated that one day upon his return 
from school, she looked up from the web on which she had 
been some time engaged, in the loom, and asked him how he 
was getting along. He replied, carelessly, that he was doing 
well enough; whereupon she took a knife and cut through the 
web on which she had spent so much time and labor. Sur¬ 
prised, he asked her the reason for her conduct. She then 
showed him that she had only done the same as he was doing; 
she had lost her labor and thrown away the time she had 
spent in weaving the web; he was also throwing away his 
precious time through neglect of his studies. The lesson was 
an impressive one. It was not lost upon her son, and did not 
need to be repeated. 

Some writers claim that Mencius studied under Tseunsze, the 
grandson of Confucius, but this is hardly probable, as he was 
born too late for that; but it is certain that he diligently 
studied the writings and maxims of Confucius, and that he held 
that the miserable state of things which he saw around him 
arose from the general neglect of the precepts of that great 
man. He deprecated the loss of faith in justice and truth, and 
that the bonds of society —the principles of morality had been 
broken asunder and the empire hastened to decay. He resolved 
to devote his life to correcting these evils, and restoring, so far 
as lay in his power, the virtues of the primitive ages. 

Although Mencius considered himself a follower of Confu- 


MENCIUS. 


67 


cius, yet in his mode of instruction, and especially in his 
behavior towards those rulers who sought his counsel, he 
differed materially from his master. In his reasoning, if less 
grave than Confucius, he displayed more art and acuteness. 
His methods were said to be not unlike the dialectic of Socra¬ 
tes. He pushed his antagonist from one admission to another, 
until obliged to either confess his defeat or maintain the most 
obvious and palpable absurdities. In his intercourse with kings 
and rulers, he was more bold and severe than Confucius, both 
in exposing folly and in denouncing injustice and oppression. 
He seems, nevertheless, to have been held in high esteem by 
the Chinese princes who became acquainted with his fame. 

It is uncertain at what period of his life he first began 
public teaching, but when he felt that he had become suffi¬ 
ciently conversant with the precepts and doctrines of Chinese 
philosophy, he commenced his travels for the purpose of offer¬ 
ing his counsels to the sovereigns and rulers in the adjacent 
States; and although he doubtless enjoyed a greater degree of 
consideration than his predecessor, Confucius, had before him, 
it cannot be claimed that he was remarkably successful in 
reforming the sovereigns he visited, and in inducing them to 
square their actions and laws by the principles of justice and 
equality. His theory of morals was probably too exalted to be 
put into practical use by the corrupt rulers of the times. Few 
or no faithful disciples to his theories were won from the 
crowned heads and those holding high authority. His precepts 
were too antagonistic to their tyrannical and oppressive prac¬ 
tices. This being the case, he found little encouragement in 
continuing the hopeless struggle any longer than was necessary 
to make a thorough trial of what his influence could effect. 
The after-part of his life was passed in the more congenial 
society of his disciples, and in writing those works by which 
he has probably exerted a greater influence in after ages than 
upon the times in which he lived. He lived to the advanced 
age of ninety years, and passed a life remarkable for virtue, 
usefulness and serenity. The descendants of Mencius, like 
those of Confucius, constitute at the present day a class of 
what may be termed the hereditary nobles —the only heredi¬ 
tary nobility of China. 


MENCIUS. 


One of the chief doctrines of Mencius was, that man is 
naturally good, although he admitted that by far the greater 
part of mankind had, through unfavorable circumstances or 
influences, become perverted. He said, the way in which a man 
loses his natural goodness is like the way in which trees are 
deprived by the woodman of their branches and foliage; and 
if they still send forth some buds and sprouts, then come the 
cattle and goats and browse upon them. As in the tree, all 
appearances of life and beauty are destroyed, so in man, after 
a long exposure to evil influences, all traces of native goodness 
seem to be obliterated. But he maintained there is an original 
power of goodness in the race, and that all men may, if they 
will, become like Yao and Shun, two of the early sages and 
kings who were pre-eminent for their virtue. A distinguished 
Chinese scholar says the great object of Mencius, in his 
writings, is to rectify men’s hearts. “ If a man once rectify 
his heart,” says Mencius, “little else will remain for him to 
do.” In another place he says: “The great or superior man 
is he who does not lose his child’s heart,” an expression which 
vividly recalls those beautiful lines of Schiller’s: 

“Happy the man who, free from sin and fault, 

Preserves the pure and childlike soul.” 

It is evident, however, that owing to his sanguine and ardent 
nature, or to some other cause, Mencius did not fully realize 
the difficulty of “rectifying one’s heart.” Yet Confucius, who 
was regarded by Mencius as the most perfect of human beings, 
recognized this great but melancholy truth, when he said it 
was only at the age of seventy that “ he could follow what his 
heart desired, without transgressing what was right.” 

Confucius had always inculcated the reciprocal obligation 
between kings and subjects. Mencius, without denying the 
general obligation of obedience on the part of subjects, thought 
nevertheless that among the various elements in a state the 
people are the most important element, and the sovereign the 
least important; and he did not hesitate to draw the legitimate 
inference from such a position, that a bad sovereign ought to 
be dethroned, and even slain, if his life should endanger, or in 
any way interfere with, the public good. 


MENCIUS. 


69 


The distinguished Orientalist, Remusat, in drawing a com¬ 
parison between Confucius and Mencius, says the former “ is 
always grave, and even austere; he exalts men of virtue, of 
whom he presents an ideal portrait; he speaks of men only 
with a cool indignation. Mencius, with the same love of 
virtue, seems to feel for vice rather contempt than abhor¬ 
rence. He assails it with the force of argument; he does not 
disdain to even employ against it the weapons of ridicule.” 
Mencius combined a certain modesty with a just and manly 
appreciation of himself. He seemed greatly surprised when 
one of his disciples was disposed to rank him as a sage; yet 
he said on another occasion: “ When sages shall rise up again, 
they will not change my words.” 

He believed he was appointed by heaven to uphold or restore 
the doctrines of the ancient sages, such as Yao, Shun and Con¬ 
fucius. Han-yu, a celebrated critic, says: “If we wish to study 
the doctrines of the sages, we must begin with Mencius. . . . 
It is owing to his words that learners now-a-days still know to 
revere Confucius, to honor benevolence and righteousness, to 
esteem the true sovereign and to despise the mere pretender.” 

The writings of Mencius were somewhat voluminous. The 
last of the “Four Books,” as large as the other three united, 
consists entirely of the writings and maxims of this teacher. 
He taught largely concerning matters of State and Govern¬ 
ment, the duties of sovereigns and people, the levying of taxes, 
the administration of justice, the province of magistrates, the 
social and domestic relations, political economy, division of 
labor, cultivation of learning, fine arts, and so forth. 

In the field of metaphysics and morals, his precepts were 
profuse; and in this place a brief selection of the latter will 
be given : 

“I love life; I also love righteousness. If I cannot keep 
both, I will let life go, and choose righteousness.” 

“ There is a nobility of heaven, and there is a nobility of 
man. Benevolence, righteousness, and self-consecration and 
fidelity, and with unwearied joy in these virtues —these consti¬ 
tute the nobility of heaven.” 

“ Benevolence subdues its opposite, just as water subdues 
fire. Those, however, who practice benevolence now-a-days do 


70 


MENCIUS. 


it as if with one cup of water they could save a whole wagon¬ 
load of fuel on fire, and, when the flames are not extin¬ 
guished, should say that water cannot subdue fire. This con¬ 
duct, moreover, greatly encourages those who are not benev¬ 
olent.” 

“There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sin¬ 
cerity on self-examination.” 

Upon a friend saying to Mencius that his principles were 
admirable, but that they were too difficult and lofty for ordi¬ 
nary minds, and asking him why he did not adapt his teaching 
to the capacity of his learners, he replied: 

“A great artificer does not, for the sake of a stupid work¬ 
man, alter and do away with the marking line.” 

The “Golden Rule” of Mencius is as follows: 

“If a man love others, and no responsive attachment is 
shown him, let him turn inward and examine his own benev¬ 
olence. If he is trying to rule others, and his government is 
unsuccessful, let him turn inward and examine his wisdom. 
If he treats others politely, and they do not return his polite¬ 
ness, let him turn inward and examine his own feelings of 
respect.” 

“ When we do not, by what we do, realize what we desire, 
we must turn inward and examine ourselves in every point. 
When a man’s person is correct, the whole empire will turn to 
him with recognition and submission.” 

“It is said in the Book of Poetry: ‘Be always studious, and 
be in harmony with the ordinances of God, and you will obtain 
much happiness.’ With what measure a man metes, it will be 
measured to him again, and consequently, before a man deals 
with others, expecting them to be affected by him, he should 
first deal with himself.” 

“ The superior man is distinguished from other men by what 
he possesses in his heart; namely, benevolence and propriety. 
The benevolent man loves others. The man of propriety 
shows respect to others.” 

“ He who loves others is constantly loved by them. He who 
respects others is constantly respected by them.” 


HESIOD. 


71 


t 


HESIOD. 


Hesiod was one of the earliest Greek poets. Very little 
is known of his life, further than that he was a native of 
Ascra, in Boetia, and lived about 900 years B. C. The following 
poetical works are attributed to him: Shield of Hercules, 
Theogony, Works and Days, and the Last Catalogue of Women. 
His Theogony is a systematic view of the origin of the powers 
of the gods, and of the order of nature. It is valuable as 
affording an account of the ancient mythology. The “Works 
and Days ” was the first poem on agriculture. The date of these 
writings is uncertain; some placing them before, others after 
Homer. These works were invested with sacred authority by 
the ancient Greeks, and were believed to have been divinely 
inspired by Apollo and the Muses. 

The Grecians had the fullest faith that Apollo and the 
Muses were genuine gods, who superintended the affairs of 
men, and filled the souls of poets and prophets with inspiration. 

“Gay, imaginative, pliable and free, the Grecians received 
religious ideas from every source, and wove them altogether in 
a mythological web of fancy, confused and wavering in its 
patterns, but full of golden threads. Strong, active, and viva¬ 
cious themselves, they invested their deities with the same 
characteristics. They did not conceive of them as dwelling 
apart in passionless majesty, like Egyptian gods, with a 
solemn veil of obscurity around them. They were in the midst 
of things, working, fighting, loving, rivaling, and outwitting 
each other, just like human beings, from whom they differed 
mainly in more enlarged powers. How to enjoy the pleasures 
of life with prudence, and invest it with the greatest degree of 
beauty, was their morality. In the procession of the nations, 
Greece always comes bounding before the imagination, like a 
graceful young man in the early freshness of his vigor; and 
nothing can wean the poetic mind from the powerful attraction 
of his immortal beauty.” 


72 


HESIOD. 


Hesiod was a priest in the temple of the Muses, on Mount- 
Helicon. These Muses were nine nymphs who were the favorite 
companions of Apollo, who, as god of light, of poetry, medi¬ 
cine and eloquence, was the central figure in Grecian mythol¬ 
ogy. The nymphs are represented by Hesiod as daughters of 
Jupiter and Mnemosyne, and as presiding over music, poetry 
and all the liberal arts. Hesiod thus writes of them: 

“The thrice three sacred maids, whose minds are knit 
In harmony, whose only thought is song, 

They sing the laws of universal heaven. 

And the pure manners of immortal gods; 

Anon they bend their footsteps toward the mount, 

Rejoicing in their beauteous voice, and song 
Unperishing. Far round, the dusky earth 
Rings with their hymning voices; and beneath, 

Their many rustling feet a pleasant sound 
Ariseth, as they take their onward way 
To their own father’s presence.” 

In Greek mythology it was taught that all things, great and 
small, were under the control and guidance of gods and demi¬ 
gods. All the phenomena of nature, all great thoughts and 
noble impulses, all that man is, and all that he has, are attrib¬ 
uted to their divine agency. Every district and town was- 
supposed to be presided over by some tutelary deity. The 
office of the priests was to perform ceremonies and repeat 
prayers, for the purpose of bringing down the celestial spirits 
into the consecrated statues. They believed that invocations 
addressed to these visible figures were heard by the gods to 
whom they were dedicated. Departed human souls were sup¬ 
posed to linger around their former dwelling-places to protect 
them. In course of time statues and altars were raised by the 
Grecians in honor of their ancestors who had particularly 
distinguished themselves by wisdom, useful inventions, or great 
victories. 

The souls of brave men and national benefactors were 
deemed worthy of offerings and tokens of gratitude, and were 
reverenced as demi-gods, who acted as mediators between the 
great gods and mortals. It was the common belief that heroes* 


HESIOD. 


73 


became stars. Every part of the Universe was filled, not only 
with holy heroes, gods and demi-gods, but with spirits, whom 
the Greeks termed demons. These demons were both good 
and evil. Hesiod writes of them thus: 

“Thrice ten thousand holy demons rove 
This breathing world, the immortals sent from Jove. 
Guardians of men, their glance alike surveys 
The upright judgments and the unrighteous ways, 

Hovering, they glide to earth’s remotest bound, 

A cloud aerial veils their forms around.” 

These beautiful nymphs, called the Graces, likewise the 
Charities, were worshiped in the same temple with the Muses. 
They presided over all the courtesies and kindly offices of life. 
In addition to these, countless Oreads sat upon the mountains, 
“ listening to the talking streams below.” Innumerable genii 
strayed among the hills, and streams, and flowers. In the 
groves, and valleys, and shady nooks, Napeads and Dryad* 
danced in the bright play of sun and shadow. On the broad 
ocean’s billows, Nereids careered, and Naiads playfully swam in 
the rippling rivers. The ancient Grecians regarded gods as but 
little more than guardian spirits. Hesiod himself consulted 
the Oracles; and it is related that the Pythia (or the priestess 
who was thought to have been controlled by the spirit of 
Apollo), saved his life by directing him to shun a certain grove. 
He frequently breathes his belief in the ministration of guar¬ 
dian spirits. 

“Invisible, the gods are ever nigh, 

Pass through our midst, and bend the all-seeing eye; 

The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right. 

Aweless of heaven’s revenge, stand naked to their sight.” 

Hesiod deemed himself a subject of the inspiration of the- 
gods and goddesses. He thus writes of the daughters of Jove: 

“They gave into my hand 
A rod of marvelous growth; a laurel bough 
Of blooming verdure; and within me breathed 


74 


HESIOD. 


A heavenly voice, that I might utter forth 
All past and future things, and bade me praise 
The blessed of ever-living God.” 

All the matchless utterances and immortal poetry of Hesiod 
are aglow with oracles and prophecies, and with fresh and beau¬ 
tiful descriptions of spirits and guardian gods. The names 
and offices and honors he gave to them make up the beautiful 
frame-work of Hellenic theogony, and have constituted the 
very warp and woof of Grecian poetry and philosophy through 
all the later ages.. 

“ God sends his teachers unto every age. 

To every clime, and every race of men, 

With revelations fitted to their growth 

And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of Truth 

Into the selfish rule of one sole race; 

Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed 
The life of man, and given it to grasp 
The master-key of knowledge, Reverence, 

Enfolds some germs of goodness and of right.” 


LYCURGUS. 


75 


LYCURGUS. 


While in the minds of many writers not a little of fable and 
uncertainty hangs around the history of this famous Spartan 
lawgiver, Rollin says, “ There is, perhaps, nothing in profane 
history better attested, and at the same time more incredible 
than what relates to the government of Sparta, and the disci¬ 
pline established in it by Lycukgus.” This brave and sternly 
honest legislator flourished nine hundred years B. C. He was 
of noble birth, being the son of Eunomus, one of the two 
kings who reigned together in Sparta. It would have been 
easy for him to have ascended the throne after the death of 
his eldest brother, the king who died without an heir; in fact 
he was king for several days. But when he learned that the 
wife of his brother was with child, he refused to be made king, 
and declared that the crown belonged to the son, if son he 
should be, and thenceforth he governed the kingdom as a 
guardian. In the meantime the widow gave him secretly to 
understand, that if he would promise to marry her, she would 
destroy the unborn child. This detestable proposition struck 
Eycurgus with horror; he, however, concealed his indignation, 
and amused the woman with indefinite pretenses, and kept her 
quiet until she went her full time, and was delivered of a son. 
As soon as the child was born he proclaimed him king, and 
took care to have him brought up and educated in a proper 
manner. The young prince, on account of the joy of the 
people at his birth, was named Charilaus. 

The state of public morals was low, and disorder and dis¬ 
regard of laws became the rule among the people. No curb 
seemed strong enough to restrain the recklessness and auda¬ 
ciousness of the populace, and every day the evil increased. 

Lycurgus conceived the bold design of making a thorough 
reformation in the Spartan Government; and to be capable of 
instituting wise laws and regulations, he deemed it advisable 


76 


LYCUKGUS. 


to travel in other countries and make himself familiar with 
their laws and civil regulations. He first visited the Island 
of Crete, where he found harsh and austere laws prevailing. 
He next passed into Asia and paid close attention to the laws 
and customs adhered to in the different nationalities in that 
quarter of the globe, the most of which he found to be of a 
milder and more merciful character. He next visited Egypt, 
which, at that time, was the seat of education, science, wisdom 
and art. 

His long absence made his countrymen the more joyful 
upon his return. The kings themselves hailed him with joy, 
so well they knew he could render important aid in controlling 
the turbulence and insubordination of the masses. It was at 
this time he undertook the herculean task of changing the 
entire code of laws of Sparta, becoming convinced that the 
introduction of a few laws only, would be productive of no 
special benefit. 

Before he put this design into execution he visited Delphi 
to consult the oracle of Apollo, where, after having offered his 
sacrifice, he received that famous answer, in which the priestess 
called him a friend of the gods , and rather a god than a man. 
As to the desire he possessed of wishing to frame a code of 
laws for his people, she told him the gods had heard his 
prayers, and that the commonwealth he thought to establish 
would be the most excellent state in the world. 

Upon his return once more to Sparta, his first aim was to 
bring over to his designs the leading men of the city, to whom 
he made known his theories and views. When made sure of 
the concurrence and approbation of the better citizens he went 
into the public market-place, accompanied by a number of 
armed men, to preserve order and to over-awe any lawless 
outbreak that might take place while he announced his plans. 

His new code provided for a Senate of thirty members, 
which was to act as a counterpoise between the despotic power 
of the king on the one hand, and the unlimited democracy of 
the masses on the other; the Senate thus serving as a check 
or neutralizer upon each. With him the ruling idea seemed 
to be that men were made for the government, rather than the 
government for men. 


LYCURGUS. 


77 


The second and most radical measure which Lycurgus 
inaugurated, was the division of land, and other property. He 
found the masses of the people very poor and without any 
land, while all the land, and most of the other property, was 
in the hands of a few. He deemed this unequal and unjust 
distribution of the wealth of the country productive of many 
evils, and he aimed to do them all away by this new distribu¬ 
tion of wealth. The measure was, of course, unpopular with 
those who had large possessions. The great majority were 
easily persuaded to accept this radical innovation. He thus 
divided the lands of Laconia into thirty thousand parts, and 
those of Sparta into nine thousand parts, and distributed a 
separate share to an equal number of individuals. After 
dividing the lands he undertook with movable, or personal 
property, but he found this so near impracticable and pro¬ 
ductive of so much dissatisfaction, that he conceived the neces¬ 
sity of destroying the accepted idea of values; and he forbid 
the use of gold and silver as money, and substituted iron. 

This new money possessed so small a value, that a cart and 
oxen were necessary to carry ten mince, equal to about one 
hundred dollars of our money. This measure was not very 
popular, and the surrounding nations ridiculed the base money 
of Sparta. Lycurgus also expurgated all useless and super¬ 
fluous arts and sciences from Sparta. 

A third measure he attempted was a system of public meals, 
by which all classes, rich and poor, should obtain their meals 
at public restaurants or eating-houses, and all fare alike. This 
was at first very unpopular with the wealthy and aristocratic 
portions of the community. His object was to do away with 
all expensive extravagances and foolish luxuries. The rich 
were extremely incensed at this new order of things, and in a 
heated altercation that took place upon the subject, a young 
man by the name of Alcander, struck out one of Lycurgus’ 
eyes. The people were greatly offended that so base an act \ 
should be committed, and delivered the young man into the 
hands of Lycurgus, that he might revenge himself upon one 
who had so greatly injured him. The revenge was worthy of 
a noble mind. He treated the young man with extraordinary 
kindness and gentleness, so much so, that the young man 


78 


L YCURGUS. 


became a fast convert to the doctrines of Lycurgus, and from 
hot-headed rashness, he became moderate and wise. 

The public tables accommodated about fifteen persons each, 
at which none could be admitted without the consent of each 
member. Each person furnished every month a bushel of flour, 
eight measures of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and 
a half of figs, and a small sum of money to pay for preparing 
the food. Every one, without exception of person, was obliged 
to be regular at his meals, and not to absent himself under 
any pretext, for the sake of having something better. King 
Agis himself, on one occasion, upon returning from a hunting 
excursion, having taken the liberty of dispensing with the law, 
and eating dinner with the Queen, his wife, was reprimanded 
and punished. 

Questions of state and of public importance were discussed 
at these meals, and both young and old soon learned to enjoy 
them. The tastes of the people readily became simple, and 
their wants were easily supplied. 

Others of the ordinances of Lycurgus were designed by him 
to establish a virtuous and happy community. He regarded 
the education of youth as of the highest importance. His 
grand principle was that children belonged to the state and 
not to their parents, therefore he would not have them brought 
up according to the humors and caprices of their respective par¬ 
ents, but would have the state instructed with the care of 
their education, in order to have them established in fixed and 
uniform principles, calculated to easily inspire them with a lovo 
of virtue and a love of country. 

As soon as a boy was born, the elders of each tribe visited 
him, and if they found him well made, strong and vigorous, 
they ordered him to be brought up by the state, and assigned 
him one of the divisions of land alluded to. If, on the con¬ 
trary, he was found to be deformed, tender and weakly, so that 
a strong, healthy constitution could not be expected, they con¬ 
demned him to perish, and caused the infant to be exposed. 
While such a rule was well calculated to produce a healthy, 
vigorous community, it was hard and merciless to those unfor¬ 
tunately of weak and illy-developed constitutions. Such a rule, 
if established in all nations, would have deprived the world of 


LYCURGUS. 


79 


such men as iEsop, Socrates, Condorcet, Tallyrand, Pope, Wal¬ 
ter Scott, and very many others who have distinguished them¬ 
selves in the various avocations of life in all ages of the world. 

Much attention was given to the physical education of Spar¬ 
tan children; in addition to plain food, they were inured to 
sleep on hard beds, to go bare-footed, and to wear the same 
clothes Winter and Summer. At the age of seven years, they 
were put into classes, where they were brought up altogether 
under the same discipline. Their education was eminently one 
of obedience to officers and parents, and the highest respect 
was demanded for age and virtue. 

Lycurgus having correctly considered that the surest way to 
have citizens submissive to the law and to the magistrates, in 
which the good order and happiness of a State chiefly consists, 
was to teach children early, and to accustom them from their 
tender years to be perfectly obedient to their masters and supe¬ 
riors. While the boys were at table, it was usual for masters 
to instruct them, by proposing questions, asking them, for 
example, “Who is the most worthy man of town? What do 
you think of this action, or that?” The boys were required to 
give ready, but brief answers, with the reasons why they 
believed as they did. Lycurgus was for having the money 
heavy, bulky, and of little value, so that its accumulation 
would be undesirable; and language he wished to be short, 
pithy, and with as much sense as possible comprised in a few 
words. The sciences were disregarded or discouraged, and lit¬ 
erature was held of second importance. The Spartan youth 
were educated more to make brave, hardy soldiers than shining- 
ornaments in' the field of literature, and to this early training 
was doubtless due the great personal bravery and endurance for 
which the Spartan soldiers were so celebrated. 

Lycurgus was in favor of the citizens having a great deal of 
leisure. Large public halls were instituted, where the people 
assembled to discourse upon matters public, serious, political,, 
and humorous, as inclination directed. The people passed little 
of their time alone, living like bees —always together and 
about their chiefs and leaders. Love of country and of public, 
good was their predominant passion. They considered them¬ 
selves as belonging to the state and not to themselves. Here 


80 


LYCUKGUS. 


was the secret of their valor, military glory, and renown. 
With them the first and most invincible law of war was never 
to fly, nor turn their backs, whatever superiority of num¬ 
bers might oppose them; never to quit their posts; never to 
deliver up their arms; in a word, to conquor or to die. 
When a spartan mother heard that her son had been killed in 
battle while fighting for his country, she was perfectly 
unmoved, and said: “ It was for this purpose that I brought 
him into the world, and for no other.” If a Spartan ever ran 
in battle, he was disgraced and dishonored forever. He was 
exiled from all posts of honor and places of employment and 
trust. It was deemed highly scandalous to make alliance with 
such, by marriage or otherwise; and when it was done, insults 
were freely offered. 

When Lycurgus had his code of laws in perfect operation, 
and desiring, as far as depended on human prudence, to render 
them immortal and unchangeable, he signified to his people 
that there was still one point remaining to be performed, the 
most essential and important of all, about which he would go 
and consult the Oracle of Apollo; and in the meantime he 
made them all take an oath, that till his return they would 
invioably maintain the form of government which he had 
established. When he arrived at Delphi, he consulted the god, 
to know whether the laws which he had made were good and suf' 
ficient to render the people virtuous and happy. The priestess 
answered, that nothing was wanting to his laws, and that as 
long as Sparta observed them, she would be the most glorious 
and happy city in the world. Lycurgus sent this answer to 
Sparta; and then, thinking he had fulfilled his mission, he vol¬ 
untarily died at Delphi, by entirely abstaining from all kinds 
of food. His views were, that even the death of great persons 
and statesmen should not be useless and unprofitable to the 
state, but a kind of supplement to their ministry, and one of 
their most important actions, which ought to do them as much, 
or more honor than all the rest. He thought in dying thus, he 
should complete and crown the services of his life, since his 
death would hold them to a perpetual observance of his insti¬ 
tution which they had sworn inviolably to observe till his 
return. 


LYCURGUS. 


81 


Thus died, in advanced years and full of honors, one of the 
moblest, most virtuous, most self-denying and sterling heroes 
the world can boast. His entire object was the prosperity and 
glory of his country, and the virtue and happiness of its peo¬ 
ple. If he erred in some directions, it must be attributed to 
the tendencies of fallible human nature, and to the undevel¬ 
oped character of the civilization which prevailed at that early 
age. There can be no question but his labors did much towards 
Imparting character, bravery and stability to his countrymen. 

Plutarch, in commenting on the life of Lycurgus, uses 
words like these, of the great legislator: “ Plato, Diogenes, 
Zeno, and all those who have treated of the establishment of a 
political state of government, took their plans from the republic 
of Lycurgus; with this difference, that they confined them¬ 
selves wholly to word and theory; but Lycurgus, without 
dwelling upon ideas and speculative projects, did really and 
effectually institute an inimitable polity, and form a whole 
city of philosophers.” 

After his death the Spartans erected a temple to him, and 
paid him divine honors. According to one legend, he ordered 
his ashes after his death to be cast into the sea, fearing that, 
if his body was taken back to Sparta, the Spartans might con¬ 
sider themselves absolved from their oath. 


4B2 


THALES 


THALES. 

Thales was of Phoenician descent, and was born at Miletus, a 
Greek colony in Asia Minor. The date of his birth is extremely 
doubtful, but the first year of the thirty-sixth Olympiad (B. C. 
640) is generally accepted as correct. 

It has been conjectured that he traveled into Egypt and 
Greece for the prosecution of his studies. He is said to have 
astonished the Egyptians by showing them how to measure 
the height of their pyramids by their shadows. It has been 
held by some authorities, that every branch of knowledge at 
that period was derived from Egypt, and that the Europeans 
were only knuwn to the Egyptians as pirates and cannibals. 
This seems inconsistent with the supposition that Thales 
should have astonished them by teaching one of the simplest 
of mathematical problems. But it is generally agreed that if 
he did travel there, he never came into communication with 
the priests, or their sources of learning, as we find no traces in 
his system of the doctrines of emanation, transmigration, and 
absorption, imported into Greece from Egypt in later times. 

Thales taught that the principle of all things is water. This 
doctrine had both a vulgar and philosophical significance in 
Egypt. The fertilizing Nile-water yielded those abundant 
crops which made Egypt the granary of the Eastern world. 
The harvests depended upon it, and through them, animals 
and men. Therefore it was apparent to the peasants of Egypt 
that water was the first principle of all things. The govern¬ 
ment was supported by it, since the proprietors of the land 
were taxed for the use of the public sluices and aqueducts. 

We may imagine the knowledge-seeking Thales carried in 
some pirate-ship to the mysterious Nile, where he saw the 
aqueducts, canals and floodgates, the great lake Moeris, dug 
by the hand of man as many ages before his day as have 
elapsed from his day to ours; he saw on all sides the adora¬ 
tion paid to the river, for it had actually become deified; he 


THALES. 


83 


learned from all with whom he came in contact that all things 
arise from water. Thales observed how necessary moisture is 
to growth; and “ that without moisture his own body would 
not have been what it was, but a dry husk falling to pieces. 
The seeds of all things are moist. Water, when condensed, 
becomes earth.” Thus convinced of the universal presence of 
water, Thales held it to be the beginning of things. 

Aristotle calls him the man who made the first attempt to 
establish a physical Beginning, without the assistance of myths. 
He has been considered an Atheist by m. dern writers. Hegel 
asserts that he could have had no conception of God as Intelli¬ 
gence, since that is the conception of a more advanced phi¬ 
losophy. The old physicists made no distinction between matter 
and the Moving Principle or Efficient Cause. 

Anaxagoras was the first to arrive at a conception of a 
Formative Intelligence. Thales had no belief in the existence 
of anything deeper than water, and prior to it. Cicero says 
that he held “ that God was the mind which created things 
out of water.” 

He doubtless believed in the gods and in the generation 
of the gods, but that they, as all other things, had their ori¬ 
gin in water, which he considered the starting-point, the pri¬ 
mary existence. This, at first glance, may appear an extrava¬ 
gant absurdity for a philosopher to entertain. 

But this system had a pregnant meaning proportioned to the 
opinions of the epoch, and lienee not entirely unworthy of 
consideration. Thales, a proficient in mathematical knowl¬ 
edge, and one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived, 
was not likely to have enunciated a philosophical thought in 
which there was no meaning worth penetrating. He evidently 
sought to discover the origin of things, and to reduce all imag¬ 
inable diversities to one principle. He strove to discover the 
one principle, the substance , of which all special existences 
were but the modes. 

Before the time of Thales men contented themselves with 
accepting the world as they found it; with believing what they 
saw; and adoring what they could not see. He looked around 
him, and the result of his meditation was the conviction that 
moisture was the Beginning. He found moisture everywhere; 


84 


THALES. 


all things he found nourished by moisture; warmth itself he 
declared to proceed from moisture; the seeds of all things are 
moist; water, when condensed, becomes earth; therefore he 
declared it to be the beginning of things. 

It has been thought that it was his intention to reconcile 
philosophy with the popular theology as delivered by Hesiod, 
who affirms Oceanus is one of the parent-gods of Nature. 

The charge ot' irreligion made against him, shows that at 
this early period there existed an antagonism between polythe¬ 
ism and scientific inquiry. He attempted to concentrate all 
supernatural powers into one; to reduce all possible agents to 
unity, and to bring forth monotheism out of polytheism. 

Thales is said to have predicted the solar eclipse which ter¬ 
minated a battle between the Medes and Lydians. He had an 
idea that the sun and stars derived their aliment out of the 
sea at the time of their rising and setting. Indeed, it has been 
supposed by some that he regarded them as living beings. Also 
that he held that the amber and the magnet possess a living 
soul, because they have a moving force, and that the whole 
world is an insouled thing. 

Nothing but a few of the tenets of Thales remain, and 
these have only reached us in fragments of uncritical tradition, 
yet we know enough of the general tendency of his doctrines 
to warrant the belief tLat he made many important steps in 
the epoch in which he lived, and that he laid, so to speak, the 
foundation-stone of Greek philosophy. 


SOLON. 


85 


SOLON. 

Olden Greece was pre-eminently the land of philosophers 
and poets, of statesmen and savans. To-day the world of let¬ 
ters looks back through twenty-five centuries to classic Greece 
for samples of the highest wisdom and culture. 

The age made illustrious by the seven Grecian sages is the 
palmiest period in the annals of antiquity. 

Solon of Athens, the poet, the philosopher, and the legis¬ 
lator, is justly accorded a leading place in the ranks of the old 
immortals. His wisdom and his virtues have secured to his 
memory the affection and veneration of mankind through all 
succeeding ages. 

Solon was a native of the island of Salamis, where he was 
born 638 B. C. In his youth he was a merchant, and as such 
traveled extensively, visiting many foreign countries. It 
appears, however, that his travels were rather for the purpose 
of gleaning knowledge, than the improvement of his fortune. 
The early part of his life was given to the cultivation of poetry, 
and the study of moral philosophy and civil obligations. He 
became greatly distinguished by his poetical talents, and some 
of his verses are still read and highly prized. 

Prior to the participation of Solon in political affairs, Athens 
had been divided by factions, and had been the theater of con¬ 
tinual turbulence. It had been subject to no legislator until it 
came under the rigorous dominion of Draco. He had given to 
Greece her first code of laws, and this, according to Demades, 
was written in blood, instead of ink. By these laws, the 
slightest offense, as well as the most enormous crime, was 
punished with death. These laws, at last, had become odious 
to Athens. The citizens had dearly learned that liberty 
depended alone upon reason and virtue and justice. They 
sought a legislator —a man of acknowledged wisdom and 
integrity. Solon was selected. 

Five hundred and ninety-four years B. C. he was unani- 


86 


SOLON. 


mously elected Archon and sovereign legislator. "When he began 
his administration of public affairs the Athenian State was demor¬ 
alized by discord and the oppressive and bloody laws of Draco. 
The great majority of the people were insolvent debtors, liable 
to be reduced to slavery. He was joyfully accepted as a medi¬ 
ator by the opposing parties, and by his wise policy he soon 
succeeded in allaying the long dissensions. He was liked by 
the rich because he was rich himself, and by the poor because 
he was honest. 

Among the first of his public acts was that of relieving the 
oppressed debtors by reducing the rate of interest, canceling 
all debts, and liberating the land from mortgage. He decreed 
that debts should be forgiven, and that no man should take 
the body of his debtor for security. He repealed the blood}' 
code of Draco, and made murder the only capital crime. The 
many virtuous qualities of Solon, his singular mildness and 
extraordinary merit, had acquired for him the confidence and 
affection of the whole city. He had been chosen to the 
supreme office of Archon by the unanimous consent of all 
parties. He was earnestly solicited to make himself king. The 
wisest among the citizens, thinking it beyond the power of 
human reason to restore tranquillity by the enforcement of a 
written code of laws, and willing that the supreme power 
should be vested in one so eminent for prudence and justice as 
Solon, earnestly besought him to accept the diadem. But 
despite all the appeals and remonstrances of friends, he firmly 
and persistently refused. His sole thought was to give his 
country a code of laws and a government which would secure 
a just and reasonable liberty. 

Having been asked whether he had given the Athenians the 
best of laws, he replied: “The best they were capable of 
receiving.” 

Space cannot be afforded in this brief sketch for even refer¬ 
ence to the wise and judicious laws made by Solon for the 
regulation of the Athenian State. It will suffice to say that 
through them the previous commotions and disorders were 
allayed, and the people secured the enjoyment of liberty and 
tranquillity. 

He made it one of the duties of the State to inquire into the 


SOLON. 


87 


ways and means each citizen made use of to obtain his liveli¬ 
hood, and to punish all those who led an idle life. The arts, 
trades and manufactures were encouraged, and all the indus¬ 
trial resources of Athens were, ere long, in a flourishing con¬ 
dition. Parents were obliged to have their children brought 
up to some useful trade or occupation. These laws were in 
force so late as the time of Cicero, who says that the Athenian 
lawgiver having been asked why he had provided no penalty 
against parricide, replied: “That to make laws against, and 
ordain punishment for, a crime that hitherto had never been 
known or heard of, was the way to introduce it, rather than 
prevent it.” 

After Solon had published his laws, and had sworn the 
citizens to religiously observe them for a century at least, he 
left Athens for the term of tfen years, during which time he 
journeyed into Egypt and Lydia, and several other countries. 
He visited the Court of Croesus of Lydia, whose very name is 
synonymous with riches. All the famous learned men of that 
age repaired to Sardis, where the wise, and wealthy, and 
warlike monarch held his court. 

The seven wise men of Greece went to Sardis and made it 
their place of residence. As the most celebrated of the seven 
sages, Solon was received at the Court of Croesus in a manner 
suited to his great reputation. The king, in all his regal pomp 
and splendor, attended by his numerous train, magnificently 
appareled, and glittering with gold and diamonds, and gor¬ 
geous gems, went forth to welcome the Athenian sage. But 
all this costly display and magnificence failed to elicit the 
least manifestation of surprise or admiration from the honored 
Grecian guest. 

The Lydian king was provoked at the coldness and indiffer¬ 
ence with which Solon viewed his immense riches; he caused 
all his costly furniture, his jewels, and statues, treasures and 
valuable vessels to be shown the unmoved sage; but the 
splendid spectacle failed to affect him. After all had been 
;shown him, he was brought back to the king, who expected 
to find him greatly impressed by the sight of such untold 
treasures and power. Knowing that the idea of wealth and 
happiness were generally associated together, Croesus asked 


SOLON. 


the sage who, in all his travels, he had found the most truly 
happy. Solon replied: “One Tellus, a citizen of Athens, a very 
honest and good man, who, after having lived all his days 
without indigence, having always seen his country in a flourish¬ 
ing condition, has left children that are universally esteemed; 
has had the satisfaction of seeing those children’s children, 
and at last died gloriously fighting for his country.” 

Croesus was quite discontented with this answer, in which 
gold and silver were accounted as nothing. “You do not reckon 
me in the number of the happy?” said he. 

Solon calmly replied: “King of Lydia, besides many other 
advantages, the gods have given us Grecians a spirit of moder¬ 
ation and reserve, which has produced amongst us a plain, 
popular kind of philosophy, accompanied with a certain 
generous freedom, void of pride and ostentation, and therefore 
not well suited to the courts of kings. This philosophy, con¬ 
sidering what an infinite number of vicissitudes and accidents 
the life of man is liable to, does not allow us either to glory 
in any prosperity we enjoy ourselves, or to admire happiness- 
in others, which, perhaps, may prove only transient or super¬ 
ficial. The life of man seldom exceeds seventy years, which 
make up in all 6,250 days, of which no two are exactly alike; 
so that the time to come is nothing but a series of various' 
accidents which cannot be foreseen. Therefore, no man can 
be esteemed happy but he whose happiness God continues to 
the end of his life ; as for others w’ho are perpetually exposed 
to a thousand dangers, we account their happiness as uncertain 
as the crown is to a person that is still engaged in battle, and 
has not yet obtained the victory.” 

Solon retired from the court of Croesus after delivering these 
words, and we can imagine the rich king’s mortification and 
disappointment as he listened to them. 

Misfortune soon came upon Croesus. He was conquered by 
Cyrus of Persia, and placed on a burning pile, when, exclaim¬ 
ing “Solon, Solon,” with great energy, his captor asked him 
the reason of such an exclamation, Croesus repeated the word& 
of the philosopher, “call no man happy before his death.’* 
Moved by the sudden realization of the instability of human? 
affairs, and struck by the force of this sentiment, Cyrus had! 


SOLON. 


89 ' 

the captive king taken from the burning pile, and became 
his most intimate friend. 

Upon his return to Athens, Solon found the whole city in 
commotion and trouble. In his absence the old factions had 
been revived. Pisistratus, one of the most powerful of the lead¬ 
ers, made himself master of the city. While all the tyrant’s 
enemies betook themselves to flight, and the whole country 
was in the utmost consternation, Solon openly reproached the 
Athenians with cowardice, and the tyrant with treachery. 
Upon being asked what it was that gave him so much firmness 
and resolution, he replied: “My old age.” 

He was, indeed, very old, and did not long survive the 
liberty of his country. The old man tranquilly passed from 
life, retaining to the last the esteem and veneration of all. 
Even the tyrant showed him every mark of friendship and. 
honor, keeping him near his person, conciliating him in every 
possible way, observing his laws himself, and causing them to 
be observed by others. 

Solon had no enemies. None knew him but to admire him 
and to do him reverence. 

And so long as superior wisdom, moral worth, nobility of 
life, and a disinterested devotion to truth and justice, and virtue 
and country, shall be valued, so long will the name and fame 
and remembrance of Solon, the Athenian sage and lawgiver, 
be sacredly treasured in the recollection of man. 

Among his many moral maxims, a few only of which have- 
been handed down to us, the following specimens deserve ta 
be commemorated. 

“In all things let reason be your guide.” 

*In everything you do consider the end.” 


90 


ANAXIMANDER. 


ANAXIMANDER. 


“The Infinite is the origin of all things.” 

The birth of this chief of the Mathematical School, and 
illustrious founder of one of the Ionic sects, was at Miletus, 
and is placed 610 B. C. He died about 546 B. C. Of his per¬ 
sonal history but little is known. Many important inventions 
are ascribed to him, particularly those of maps and sun-dials. 
His work in which he calculates the size and distances of the 
suns and stars, is the oldest prose work on philosophy men¬ 
tioned among the Greeks. He was also the originator of a 
series of geometrical problems. His fondness for mathematics 
amounted to a passion. He supposed the earth to be of a cyl¬ 
indrical form, in a vertical position, and that its base was one- 
third of its altitude; that it was kept in the centre of the solar 
system by the equal pressure of the air upon all sides. 

He attributed the origin of living creatures to the action of 
the sun’s heat upon the primal miry earth, from which was 
produced filmy bubbles, surrounded with a kind of rind; that 
these at length burst open, from which animals came forth as 
from an egg. These imperfect and ill-formed shapes subse¬ 
quently became progressively perfected. 

He was the friend of Thales, and is said to have resided 
some time at the court of Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, where 
Anacreon and Pythagoras likewise lived. He was the first to 
use the term Infinite Principle for the beginning of things. 

Writers have considerably disagreed as to what he wished 
to signify by these words: some contending that they should 
be understood to imply no more than vastness; others that 
they were synonymous with Limitless Power, Limitless Mind, 
the Unlimited All. 

Anaximander’s axiom was: “The Infinite is the origin of 
all things.” The great postulate of his philosophy was that 
things arose by the separation of a universal mixture of all. 
He imputed to chaos an internal energy by which its parts 


ANAXIMANDEE. 


91 


•spontaneously separated from each other, these parts being 
absolutely unchangeable. By the Infinite he undoubtedly 
meant the multitude of elementary parts out of which individ¬ 
ual things issued by separation. In other words, creation was 
the decomposition of the Infinite. 

He also held that, inasmuch as the Infinite was the cause 
of generation, it was also the cause of destruction; that “ things 
must all return from whence they came, according to destiny, 
for they must all, in order of time, undergo due penalties and 
expiation of wrong doing.” 

Bitter writes thus of this tenet of Anaximander: 

“ He is represented as arguing that the primary substance 
must have been infinite to be all-sufficient for the limitless 
variety of produced things with which we are encompassed. 
Now, although Aristotle especially characterizes this Infinite as 
a mixture, we must not think of it as a mere multiplicity of 
primary material elements; for to the mind of Anaximander it 
was a unity immortal and imperishable — an ever-producing 
energy. This production of individual things he derived from 
an eternal notion of the Infinite.” 

The parts of the whole he regarded as constantly changing, 
while the whole was unchangeable. Finite things are but the 
manifestations of the All-in other words, creation is the 
earthly existence of God, or God passing into eternal motion. 

Many great minds of modern times, among whom may be 
mentioned Hegel, have maintained a similar opinion. While 
Thales taught that water was the primary element; while other 
profound philosophers of antiquity believed air to be the origin 
of things, Anaximander conceived an Infinite Existence as the 
Abstract All. 

As one of the contributors to the grand conceptions of the 
ancient systems of speculation, he is entitled to a place in 
our Pantheon of Philosophers. 


92 


BIAS. 


BIAS. 

Bias was celebrated as one of the ‘‘Seven Wise Men of 
Greece; ” and was so distinguished for his wisdom, justice, 
morality, and upright conduct towards his fellow men, that he 
assuredly is deserving a place among the brave and good men 
of the world. 

Bias was born at Priene, in Ionia, and flourished in the 
reign of Halyattes II., and of Croesus, King of Lydia, about 608 
years B. C. according to some authors; but according to Blair’s 
Tables, about 563 B. C. He was not only distinguished for his 
eminent wisdom, but also for his generosity and public spirit. 
For these qualities he was held in the highest esteem and 
veneration by his countrymen. He passed much of his life in 
a public capacity, both as a local ruler of his native city, and 
as an advocate before the tribunals of his country; and in this 
avocation enjoyed an enviable reputation for integrity, intelli¬ 
gence, practical wisdom, love of justice and honor. 

Though born to great riches, he lived without splendor,, 
expending his fortune to relieve the needy; and although 
esteemed the most eloquent orator of his time, he desired to 
reap no other advantage from his talents than the glory of 
his country. In his pleadings he showed such discrimination 
as to never undertake any cause which he did not think was 
just. It was usual to say of a good cause, that it was one that 
Bias would have undertaken. His judgment was so good, and 
his discernment so quick, that he was able to arrive at a correct 
and ready conclusion. 

When Halyattes laid siege to Priene, Bias, who was then 
chief magistrate, made a vigorous resistance for a long time,, 
and owing to a scarcity of provisions, the city was reduced to 
the greatest extremity. Bias caused two fat, sleek-looking 
mules to be driven towards the enemy’s camp, as though they 
had escaped from the besieged town. Halyattes seeing the 
animals in so good a condition, supposed the town must bo 


fe I AS. 


93 


well supplied with provisions, and that the probability of it 
soon being obliged to surrender from danger of starvation very 
remote, but in order to be certain, he contrived to send a spy 
into the city to learn the condition of things. Bias, suspecting 
the design, had caused large heaps of sand to be covered with 
"wheat, and the spy, seeing such quantities of grain, reported 
the same to the king. Halyattes immediately concluded it was 
useless to prolong the siege, and readily made favorable terms 
with Bias, and left the inhabitants of Priene in peace. 

As an instance of the generosity of Bias, it is related of him 
that when several young females were taken captive by pirates 
and brought from Messene to Priene to be sold as slaves, he 
purchased them all, educated them as his own daughters, and 
afterwards restored them safely, and with a dower, to their 
friends. Such generous conduct could not fail to make him 
extremely popular with the people, and it is not strange that 
he was styled “the prince of wise and good men.” 

As an evidence of the low estimation in which he held the 
gifts of fortune compared with the endowment of mind, it is 
said when Priene was, on another occasion, threatened with a 
siege, and the inhabitants were leaving it, loaded with their 
most valuable effects, Bias took no pains to save his property, 
alleging, as a reason when asked for an explanation of his 
indifference, “I carry all my treasures with me.” 

Bias is said to have composed above two thousand verses of 
prudential maxims, morals, precepts, and words of wisdom. 
The following are specimens of the sentiments he taught: 

“It is a proof of a weak and disordered mind to desire 
impossibilities.” 

“The greatest infelicity is not to be able to endure misfor¬ 
tune patiently.” 

“ Great minds alone can support a sudden reverse of fortune.” 

“The most pleasant state is to be always gaining.” 

“Be not unmindful of the miseries of others.” 

“If you are handsome, do handsome things; if deformed, 
supply the defects of your nature by your virtues.” 

“Be slow in undertaking, and resolute in executing.” 

“Praise not a worthless man for the sake of his wealth.” 

“ Whatever good you do, ascribe it to the gods.” 




94 


BIAS. 


“ Lay in wisdom as the store for your journey from youth 
to old age, for it is the most certain possession.” 

“Many men are dishonest; then love your friend with some 
degree of caution, for he perchance may become your enemy.” 

Two thousand of such wise precepts and truthful maxims 
would make a collection more valuable than much that has 
been written both before and since by those who have set up 
greater pretensions to divine aid and dictation. 

He was eminent for practical wisdom and high moral con¬ 
duct; and was one of those few men, who, after a long life of 
usefulness, could not be charged with immoral, dishonest, nor 
purely selfish conduct. His religion did not consist in allegi¬ 
ance to beings high above the earth, but to his fellow men 
around him. If he could alleviate their needs it was more con¬ 
genial with his desires than the service of an unknown god. 

The circumstances attending his death were no less illus¬ 
trious than had been those of his life. He caused himself to 
be carried into the Senate, where he zealously defended one of 
his friends: but having become very far advanced in life, it 
fatigued him very much. He leaned his head upon the breast 
of a son of one of his daughters who had attended him. When 
the orator who had pleaded for his opponent had finished his 
speech, the judges pronounced at once in favor of Bias, who 
immediately expired in the arms of his grandson. Thus peace¬ 
fully passed away one of Nature’s noblemen of ancient times. 


^JSOP. 


95 


JESOP. 


This man stands at the head of the class of teachers who 
sought to impart moral lessons by giving speech to animals, 
and as he is held to be the inventor of those short pieces of 
moral wisdom with which the readers of all ages since his time 
have been delighted, he doubtless deserves a brief mention 
among the teachers and thinkers of olden time. If he was not 
the first who used fables to impart moral instruction, he was 
assuredly a master in that particular line, and probably no one 
has ever superseded him in point, terseness, brevity, as well as 
for the practical good sense his creations displayed. It is not 
to be supposed he was the author of all the fables that have 
been attributed to him; many were written by others, and at a 
later date. 

He was a Phrygian, and was born about 600 B. C. He was 
full of wit and astuteness, but exceedingly deformed. He was 
short, hump-backed, and ill-looking in the face. It is said of 
him, that he hardly had the figure of a man. In addition to 
his deformity, he had an impediment in his speech, to the 
extent that at times he could hardly be understood. 

He was a slave, and his deformed appearance lessened his 
value in the market; a merchant who once bought him found 
it difficult to get him off his hands. His first master set him 
at work in the field, doubtless deeming him unfit for other 
employment. 

He was afterwards sold to a philosopher named Xanthus, 
who was greatly amused with the strokes of wit, drollery, 
quick repartee and overflowing humor of his menial. On one 
occasion Xanthus having a number of friends to dine with him, 
he ordered 2Esop to procure the best ot everything to be found 
in the market. The facetious slave bought nothing but tongues, 
and ordered the cook to serve them up with varied sauces. 
When the master brought his guests to dinner, and found that 
the first, second, and third courses, as well as the side dishes, 


‘96 


M SOP. 


consisted of tongue, only, he turned in a passion to iEsop and 
said: “ Did I not order you to purchase the best the market 
affords?” “And have I not obeyed your orders?” responded 
iEsop. “ Is there anything better than a tongue ? Is not the 
tongue the bond of civil society; the key of the sciences, and 
the organ of truth and reason ? By means of the tongue, cities 
are built, governments established and administered? With 
the tongue men instruct, persuade, and preside in assemblies. 
It is the instrument by which we acquit ourselves of the chief 
of our daily duties, the praising and adoring of the gods.” 
“Well, then,” said Xanthus, thinking to catch him, “go to 
market again to-morrow, and buy the worst of everything that 
is to be had; the same company will dine with me again. I 
wish to diversify my entertainment.” On the next day JEsop 
provided only tongues again, telling his master, when taken to 
task for his conduct, that “the tongue was the worst thing in 
the world. It is the instrument of all strife, the fomenter of 
all law-suits, the source of divisions, quarrels, and wars. It is 
the organ of error, calumny, blasphemy, and lies.” The com¬ 
pany, if not pleased with the tongue iEsop had procured for 
them to eat, were greatly amused with the tongue he used to 
defend himself. 

JEsop encountered much difficulty in obtaining his freedom, 
and upon his doing so, he repaired at once to Croesus, the rich 
king of Lydia, who had heard of the remarkable wit of the 
the fabulist, and was desirous of seeing him. At first the king 
was greatly shocked at iEsop’s deformity, but the beauty of 
Lis mind made ample amends for his bodily defects. Croesus 
soon found, as iEsop said on another occasion, that the form 
of the vessel should not be considered, but the quality of 
liquor it contains. 

iEsop made several voyages into Greece, either on pleasure 
or on business for Croesus. Being at Athens a short time after 
Pisistratus had usurped the sovereignty and abolished popular 
.government, and observing the Athenians bore the new yoke 
with great impatience, he repeated to them the fable of the 
frogs who demanded a king of Jupiter. 

iEsop has been credited, as observed, with being the author 
and inventor of the simple and natural manner of imparting 


97 


J3S0P. 

instruction by tales and fables, but it is doubtful whether at 
least an equal share of the honor is not due to Hesiod, who, a 
few centuries earlier, used the same method of imparting 
instruction. A portion of the fables credited to iEsop were 
probably written by Planudes, who lived in the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury, and who wrote the life of the earlier fabulist. 

JEsop’s fables became very popular in early times. They 
had a charm and fascination about them that was pleasing, 
not only to children, but to persons of maturer years. Plato 
imparts the information that Socrates, a little before his death, 
turned some of iEsop’s fables into verse: and Plato himself 
earnestly recommends them to nurses and teachers, as an 
excellent means of imparting to young minds interesting, and 
practical moral lessons, calculated to form their manners aright 
and to early inspire them with a love of wisdom. 

Plutarch relates the manner of iEsop’s death thus: “He 
went to Delphi with a large quantity of gold and silver to offer, 
in the name of Croesus, a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give 
to each inhabitant a considerable sum. A quarrel which arose 
between him and the people of Delphi, caused him, after the 
sacrifice, to send back the money to Croesus and to inforn| him 
that those for whom it was intended had rendered themselves 
unworthy of his bounty. The inhabitants becoming incensed 
•at this, caused him to be condemned as guilty of sacrilege, and 
to be thrown from a high rock. Thus the harmless iEsop 
became a victim to the intolerance of those who believed in 
1;he gods. 

The Athenians, with due appreciation of the merits of iEsop, 
•erected a noble statue to his memory, to commemorate the 
learning, ingenuity and wisdom of the deformed slave, and 
to let the people know that the ways of honor are equally open 
to all mankind, and that it was not to birth, but merit, that 
iso honorable a distinction was paid. 

The writings of few men have probably possessed a greatei 
popularity than the simple stories and fables of iEsop. The> 
have been translated into nearly all languages and used a&, 
modes of teaching the young of nearly all nations. It cannot 
"be denied that iEsop did his share in giving shape and direc¬ 
tion to the growing human intellect. 


4 


98 


PYTHAGORAS. 


PYTHAGORAS. 


No character stands out against the background of antiquity in 
more gigantic grandeur than Pythagoras, the Sage of Samos. 
It is somewhat difficult to detach him from his unreal place in 
the realm of fable; but it is historically certain that he was not 
only a real character, but that he was the first of philosophers, 
and the most distinguished individual of his age. The ancient 
authors assign various dates as the time of his birth, disa¬ 
greeing within the limits of eighty-four years. But the most 
probable date of his advent into the world as Pythagoras is the 
third year of the forty-eighth Olympiad; that is, 586 years before 
the reputed birth of his Christian rival. According to Diogones 
Laertis, Pythagoras had a distant recollection of having formerly 
existed in Atalides, then Euphorbus, and afterwards Harmotinius, 
prior to his birth at Samos. The evidence is much more satisfac¬ 
tory that he was the discoverer of the celebrated theorem in the 
first book of Euclid. He is generally and indisputably held to 
have been the founder of mathematics, and to have first laid 
down the true theory of the planetary system, which was laid 
aside and forgotten through all the intervening ages of Christian 
ignorance until revived by Copernicus. Newton, Gregory, and 
Kiel honor Pythagoras with a knowledge of the real position of 
the stars, and with having taught the true celestial system. The 
origin of the word philosopher is ascribed to him. Being asked 
by Leontius what was his art, his memorable reply was: “ I have 
no art; I am a philosopher.” Never having heard the name 
before, Leontius asked what it meant. Pythagoras gave this 
sublime answer: “ This life may be compared to the Olympic 
games; for as in this assembly some seek glory and the crowns; 
some by the purchase or the sale of merchandise seek gain; and 
others, more noble than either, go there neither for gain nor 
applause, but solely to enjoy the wonderful spectacle, and to see 
and know all that passes; we, in the same manner, quit our own 
country, which is Heaven, and come into the world, which is an 


PYTHAGORAS. 


99 


assembly where many work for profit, many for gain, and where 
there are but few who, despising avarice and vanity, study 
Nature. It is these last whom I call philosophers; for as there is 
nothing morb noble than to be a spectator without any personal 
interest, so in this life the contemplation and knowledge of 
Nature are infinitely more honorable than any other appli¬ 
cation. ” 

Pythagoras was the pupil of Pherecydes, who is claimed by 
Cicero as the first who taught the doctrine of the immortality of 
the soul. He afterwards became proficient in the priestly lore of 
Egypt, the ancient wonder-land of learning. After subjecting 
himself for twenty-two years to all the hardships of a priesthood 
so jealous of their instructions as not to bestow them even on the 
most favored of their own countrymen, unless belonging to their 
own caste, Pythagoras succeeded in mastering all the mysteries 
of Egyptian science. Upon his return to Greece he opened a 
secret school, into which none were admitted until after a severe 
matriculation. His pupils were required to observe strict silence 
for five years, to dress simply, eat but little, and eat no animal 
food. Among the numerous founders of Greek philosophy, 
Pythagoras stands alone. He differed from the others in his 
estimation of women. They were admitted to his lectures. His 
wife was said to have been herself a philosopher, and his school 
included fifteen disciples of the softer sex. His influence became 
unbounded in Greece, and extended to the cities of Italy. He 
was venerated by his pupils as a god. He was ranked above 
ordinary mortals even by the historians of later ages, by whom 
he was portrayed sitting above all earthly struggles in serene 
contemplation of the mysteries of life and immortality, with a 
golden crown upon his head and clothed in white—grave, majes¬ 
tic, and calm. 

It is said that he surpassed in personal beauty all that human¬ 
ity had seen. The music of his voice enraptured the human ear:,, 
while his powers of persuasion were irresistible. His system of 
morals was the purest ever propounded to man. His conceptions, 
of a deity rival any contained in the Christian Scriptures. “ None 
but God is wise,” is one of his expressions. But his name is most 
generally associated with the doctrine of the metempsychosis— 
that is, the eternal migration of souls from one bodytoanother* 


100 


PYT H AGOE AS. 


as believed by the Hindoos of the present day. After having- 
received the distinct existence and immortality of the soul from 
Pherecydes of Syrus, it was but a necessary step to find some 
employment for them; and that of their eternal transmigration 
from one form to another, is, perhaps, as consistent to the reason¬ 
ing mind, after all its plunges into the vast unknown, as that of 
their existence at all. The Christians evidently derived their 
doctrines of original sin, and the necessity of being born again, 
from misunderstanding the Pythagorian Metempsychosis. He 
taught that the souls which had not rightly acquitted themselves 
in a previous existence, were born in sin, and that they brought 
with them the remains of a corrupt nature derived from their 
former state, for which they received proper punishment by the 
calamities attending their birth into this life. He further held 
that they would finally be recovered to virtue, and would attain 
perfect happiness. Christ is represented as having endeavored to 
inculcate a similar doctrine upon Nicodemus. Before the Chris¬ 
tian proceeds to ridicule this whimsical theory, let him refer to 
Matt. xvii. 13, in which Je us himself confirms the Pythagorean 
philosophy by giving his disciples to understand that John the 
Baptist was the soul of Elias come again in the person of that 
prophet. In Matt. xvii. 12, we find that the Pharisees repre¬ 
sented that Jesus was Elias. The doctrine of Metempsychosis 
is particularly inculcated in the 90th Psalm. “Lord, thou hast 
been our refuge from one generation to another” (that is in 
every state of existence through which we have passed). Thou 
turnest man to destruction; again thou sayest, come unto me 
ye children of men.” 

“For a thousand years in thy sight are as but yesterday: 
seeing that it is passed as a watch in the night.” 

“ Comfort us again now, after the time that thou hast plagued 
us, and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity,” and 
so forth. 

The term of mitigation during which the soul of man was 
believed to expiate in other forms the deeds done in the days 
of humanity, according to Pythagoras, was exactly a -thousand 
years. Surely no theory is better calculated to console the mind 
under the fear of death, or for the loss of friends, than the per¬ 
suasion that the period of separation would pass as but a watch. 


PYTH AGOBAS. 


101 


in the night, and upon their next return into humanity, they 
should be beautified in proportion to all the trials they had suf¬ 
fered in their present state of existence. Absurd as this doctrine 
of transmigration may appear, Pythagoras adopted it as a basis 
of as pure a system of morals as the world has ever known. 
He w T as strictly a Deist, a steady maintainer of the unity of 
God, and the eternal obligations of moral virtue. Nothing in 
Christian literature, even to this day, can rival the sublimity 
and grandeur of the teachings of this illustrious philosopher 
of antiquity concerning God, and the sacred obligations of 
moral duties. The Christian Fathers acknowledged the superi¬ 
ority of Pythagoras by endeavoring to show that he was a Jew, 
and a disciple of the prophet Ezekiel. The nature of this work 
will not admit a more extended account of the opinions of this 
grand old Grecian. The following is extracted from Higgins’ 
Celtic Druids, pp. 283, 284: “Of the vast variety of religions 
which have prevailed at different times in the world, perhaps 
there was no one that had been more general than that of the 
Metempsychosis. It continued to be believed by the early 
Christian Fathers, and by several sects of Christians. As much 
as this doctrine is now scouted, it was held not only by almost 
all the great men of antiquity, but a late very ingenious writer, 
philosopher and Christian apologist, avowed his belief in it, and 
published his defense of it; namely, the late Soame Jenyns.” 

Perhaps it is as rational as any theological speculation; and 
had it been more frightful might have been entertained by the 
orthodox. 

There is no reliable account of the death of Pythagoras. One 
represents him as having been caught up into the heavens in a 
flood of celestial light; but it is easier to believe the story of his 
going into the temple of the Muses, and being seen no more. 


102 


XENOPHANES. 


XENOPHANES. 

“There is but one God; he has no resemblance to the 
bodily form of man, nor are his thoughts like ours.” 

Thus taught the old Greek monotheist, Xenophanes, more 
than twenty-four centuries ago. Over six hundred years before 
the Christian theology was originated, he proclaimed God as 
an all-powerful being, existing from eternity, and without any 
likeness to man; that the plurality of Gods was an inconceiv¬ 
able error, and that, in the nature of things, there could not 
be more than one all-perfect, eternal, and omnipresent deity. 

Xenophanes ranks among the most marvelous minds which 
made ancient Greece glorious for all time. He was born at 
Colophon, an Ionian city of Asia Minor, about 600 years B. C., 
and lived nearly one hundred years. The joy of his youth was 
in the cultivation of elegiac poetry; and upon being banished 
from his native city, he adopted the profession of a Rhapsodist, 
and wandered over Sicily as a minstrel. He learned his poems 
by heart, and recited them to assembled crowds on public 
occasions. He derived but little pecuniary benefit from this 
manner of life. He lived poor, and died poor. 

In many respects he is judged to have been the most 
remarkable man of antiquity. He waged a fierce war against 
Homer, Hesiod, and the popular poets, because they promoted 
the polytheism of the times, defaced as they were by the gross 
immoralities of the gods. He denounced them for degrading 
the idea of divinity. He had no pity on the luxurious and 
splendid superstitions of the age; no toleration for the sunny 
legends of Homer, tinctured as they were with the frivolities 
of polytheism. From the deep sincerity of his heart, from the 
holy enthusiasm of his great reverence, he opposed the degra¬ 
dation of the divine in the common religion and in the Homeric 
fables. He who believed in one God, supreme in power, good¬ 
ness, and intelligence, could not but see, “more in sorrow 
than in anger,” the debasing anthropomorphism of his fellows. 


103 




4 


XENOPHANES. 

Xenophanes was the great deistic Infidel of the sixth century- 
before Christ, as Thomas Paine was in the eighteenth century- 
after Christ. Both alike regarded all revelation as frivolous 
fiction. The ancient Infidel held that the vulgar belief which 
imputes to Deity the passions, failings, and crimes of humanity, 
is the height of absurdity and blasphemy. He denounced the 
impiety of those who had no other conception of the great 
Supreme than as a monstrous personality. 

In his verses he severely satirizes the Ethiopians, who repre¬ 
sent their gods with flat noses and black complexions; while 
the Thracians give them blue eyes and ruddy complexions. 

Having himself obtained a clear conviction of 

“ One God, of all beings divine and human the greatest. 

Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in spirit,'’ 

it became the object of his life to propagate his views of the 
unity and perfection of the Godhead, and to rend the veil of 
superstition from the fair, calm countenance of Truth. And 
for three-quarters of a century this great Rhapsodist of truth 
wandered from place to place, through many lands, uttering 
the sublime thought -which was struggling within him. 

His philosophic verses, once so eagerly listened to and affec¬ 
tionately perpetuated from generation to generation in tradi¬ 
tionary scraps, only now exist in fragmentary extracts in 
antique books, and read only by some rare old scholar. Xenoph¬ 
anes passed a long and laborious life in withstanding poly¬ 
theism to its face, and in diffusing his rhythmic words of 
wisdom. He sowed the seeds of that scepticism which has 
played so large a part in the philosophies of the succeeding 
ages. His acute mind sought to solve the problem of existence. 
He confessed that all his knowledge enabled him only to know 
how little he knew. It was he who first raised the cry of 
the nothingness of knowledge —that nothing can be certainly 
known. On all sides he was oppressed with mysteries which 
his profound philosophy could not penetrate. 

Casting his eyes upwards at the immensity of heaven, he 
[like Aristotle] declared that the “One is God.” Overarching 
him was the deep blue, infinite vault, immovably, unchange¬ 
able, embracing him and all things; that he proclaimed to be 


104 


XENOPHANES. 


God. As Thales had gazed abroad upon the sea, and felt that 
he was resting on its infinite bosom, so Xenophanes gazed 
above him at the sky, and felt that he was encompassed by it. 
Moreover it was a great mystery, inviting, yet defying scrutiny. 
The sun and moon whirled through it; the stars were 

“ Pinnacled dim in its intense inane.” 

The earth was constantly aspiring to it in the shape of vapor, 
the souls of men were perpetually aspiring to it with vague> 
yearnings. It was the center of all existence; it was existence 
itself. It was the one —the immovable, on whose bosom the 
many were moved. 

It only remains to complete this brief sketch by stating 
some of the conclusions at which this great thinker arrived. 
The greatest peculiarity of his doctrine was his Monotheism, 
or more properly speaking, pure Pantheism. He annihilated 
the superstitious notion of a multiplicity of gods, and enunci¬ 
ated the self-existence and intelligence of but one. He affirmed 
that nothing can be produced from nothing. Whence, there¬ 
fore, was being derived? Not from itself, since it must have 
been already in existence to produce itself, or have been pro¬ 
duced from nothing. Therefore, being is self-existent, and 
hence eternal. It follows that God is all-existent, and conse¬ 
quently the all; that he is unmoved, since there is nothing to 
move him; for he cannot move himself, as he cannot be 
external to himself. He argued against a personal God, distinct 
from the Universe. He could not separate God from the world, 
which was merely the manifestation of God. There could not 
be a God as the one existent all, and a Universe not God. 
There could be but one existence, and that was God. In a 
symbolical manner he represented God as a sphere, like the 
heavens, which encompass all that is. 

The identity of God with the Universe, and the utter denial 
of the polytheistic theory was the central idea of the old poet¬ 
ical philosopher, to the spreading abroad of which he devoted, 
his days in many lands at the risk of liberty and life. 


ANAXIMENES. 


105. 


ANAXIMENES. 

Anaximenes was born at Miletus about 548 B. C. He is 
credited with being the discoverer of the obliquity of the 
ecliptic by means of the gnomon. 

Thales had held water to be the primitive substance. For 
this Anaximenes substituted air. He thought that the atmos¬ 
phere reached as far as the stars, and that the earth was “like 
a broad leaf floating in the air.” Looking upward, and not 
being able to discern any boundary to the atmosphere, he gave 
it the attribute of infinity. Feeling without himself the ever- 
moving, invisible air, and within himself a something which 
moved him, he knew not how nor why, he concluded that his 
life was the air. Since life consists in inhaling and exhaling 
it, and ceases as soon as that process stops, he argued that the> 
human soul is nothing but air. Ho believed that the air which 
was within him, was a part of the air which was without him, 
and that it, therefore, was the beginning of things. 

Observing that when he breathed with his lips drawn 
together the air was cold, but became warm when he breathed 
through the open mouth, he taught that warmth and cold 
arose from mere rarefaction and condensation. Hence, he held 
that air might become fire, with a sufficient rarefaction, and 
that this probably was the origin of the suns, and stars, and 
blazing comets; and that with sufficient condensation it would 
be changed into clouds, water, snow, and even into earth itself. 
From this he deduced the doctrine that the air was infinite — 
that it was God —and that all the gods and goddesses had 
sprung from it. All things were produced from the universal 
air —all things were resolved into it. The great Universe was 
as a leaf resting upon it. It was the very stream of life which 
held together all substances, and gave them unity, force, and 
vitality. All things were nourished by it, and when he breathed 
he drew in a part of the universal life. In short, it was the 
one essence from which all things originated. 



106 


ARISTIDES. 


ARISTIDES. 


The name of Aristides gives a lustre to the annals of 
ancient Greece. It is one conspicuous in the long list of 
Athenian generals and statesmen of eminent merit and imper¬ 
ishable renown; and yet it is neither as a general nor a states¬ 
man that he is best known. He was surnamed “The Just,” 
and by this title is best known. 

He was born at Alopeka, in Attica, 514 B. C. It was a cus¬ 
tom among the old Grecians for young men who were ambi¬ 
tious of distinction and public preference, to attach themselves 
to great and experienced men, whose acknowledged worth 
commended them as models for the young. One of the most 
illustrious Grecians of that time was Clisthenes, who had zeal¬ 
ously defended the liberty of Athens and greatly contributed 
to its prosperity. To him Aristides attached himself, and 
became his constant disciple and faithful imitator. Strange to 
say, history furnishes no incident of particular interest in his 
life till the battle of Marathon, 490 B. C. A powerful Persian 
army had advanced into Greece, with instructions to plunder 
and burn Athens, and send the inhabitants to Persia in chains. 
Receiving no help from its sister cities, Athens was reduced to 
the extremity of arming its slaves, which had never before 
been done. The invading forces numbered one hundred and ten 
thousand men; the Athenians could oppose to them only ten 
thousand, and these were utterly destitute of both cavalry and 
archers. The little Athenian army was headed by ten gener¬ 
als, who commanded alternately, each for one day. Much 
jealousy and dissension prevailed among the commanders. 

Aristides, the only one of this number actuated solely by 
love of the public good, sought in every way to allay this 
deplorable discord. And reflecting that a command which 
changed every day must necessarily be weak and disadvan¬ 
tageous, he labored diligently ar^d disinterestedly to have the 
whole power committed to one general, and him the most 


ABISTIDEb. 


107 


capable and experienced. When the day came on which it was 
his turn to take the command, he modestly resigned it to 
Miltiades, one of his colleagues, whom he modestly acknowl¬ 
edged was the abler general. This wise and considerate course 
induced the rest of the ten to follow his example. All became 
inspired with his patriotic zeal for the welfare of the common¬ 
wealth. Thanks to the disinterested efforts of Aristides, and 
the masterly generalship of Miltiades, the hosts of Persia 
were put to flight. The Athenians pursued them to their ships, 
many of which they set on fire. An Athenian soldier, still 
reeking with the blood of the enemy, ran to Athens with the 
glorious news. When he arrived, he could only utter the two 
words: “Rejoice, victory!” and fell dead. 

Such was the confidence in the discretion, justice, and integ¬ 
rity of Aristides, that to him alone of the other generals, was 
entrusted the care of the spoils and prisoners. In discharging 
the difficult duties of this commission, he maintained his repu¬ 
tation for integrity, and proved himself worthy of the exalted 
opinion entertained of him. For though gold and silver were 
scattered about the enemy’s camp in abundance, and though 
all the captured tents and galleys were full of all kinds of 
treasures of an immense value, he not only was not tempted 
to touch any of it himself, but zealously guarded it from the 
approaches of others. His illustrious deeds at Marathon, the 
most glorious battle in which the Grecians ever engaged, his 
patriotism and unpurchasable honor, and the eminent services 
he rendered the commonwealth, were gratefully acknowledged 
by the Athenian people. He was created Chief Archon in 489. 

The following incident shows that the trust of his fellow 
countrymen in his probity and prudence was fully justified, 
and that it was not without reason he was surnamed “ The 
Just.” 

Themistocles, one of his colleagues in the administration of 
public affairs, entertained a project for raising Athens to the 
first city of Greece by supplanting the Lacedaemonians, and 
taking the government out of their hands. He regarded any 
measure justifiable by which this end could be accomplished. 
On a certain day he announced in a full assembly of the peo¬ 
ple, that he had a very important plan for securing the future 


108 


ARISTIDES. 


power and prosperity of Athens; but as it was necessary it 
should be executed with the greatest secrecy, in order to insure 
success, he desired them to appoint a person on whose opinion 
they could place the utmost reliance, to consider his measure 
and report to them. The assembly unanimously selected Aris¬ 
tides, and the matter was submitted entirely to him. Having 
taken him aside, Themistocles revealed his design for making' 
Athens the mistress of all Greece. This was to destroy the 
fleet belonging to the other states which then lay in a neigh¬ 
boring port. Aristides returned to the assembly and assured 
them that nothing, indeed, could be more advantageous to the 
city than the execution of Themistocles’ proposed plan; but 
that, at the same time, nothing could be more unjust. There¬ 
upon the proposal was unanimously condemned. 

The annals of mankind afford nothing worthier everlasting 
admiration than this action of a whole people in rejecting a 
measure for their political advantage and aggrandizement sim¬ 
ply upon the assurance of a citizen that it was contrary to jus¬ 
tice. And greater glory could not be given to mortal man than 
the public recognition of his merit by such a people, and their 
investing him with the title of “The Just.” 

Plutarch relates the following characteristic anecdote: On 
one occasion he was sitting as a juror to try a case, when the 
plaintiff, with the hope of biasing the court in his favor, 
recounted the wrongs the defendant had done to Aristides, on 
which the latter stopped him with the remark: “State what 
he has done to you. I am here to decide your cause, not 
my own.” 

His inviolable attachment to integrity and justice frequently 
obliged him to oppose Themistocles, who employed every 
intrigue for removing a rival that always thwarted his ambi¬ 
tious designs, and whose distinguished merit excited his envy 
and hostility. At last his conspiracies proved successful, and 
the just Aristides was sent into banishment 483 B. C., on the 
pretext that his influence had become dangerous to public 
liberty. 

In public trials of this kind the people gave their verdict 
by writing it upon a shell, from the Greek name of which has 
been derived the term Ostracism. During the process by which 


ARISTIDES. 


109 


Aristides was ostracized, a voter who could not write, and one 
who did not know him, requested him to put the name of 
Aristides upon his shell, or voting tablet. “ Has Aristides done 
you any injury, that you are for condemning him in this man¬ 
ner?” he asked. “No,” replied the voter, “I do not so much 
,as know him; but I am quite tired and angry with hearing 
everybody call him ‘The Just.’” Aristides wrote his name 
and handed him the shell without a word further. He went 
into banishment, imploring the gods that no evil might befall 
his country to cause it to regret him. 

Upon Xerxes’ invasion in 480 B. C., he was recalled, even 
his former foe, Themistocles, exerting all his influence to pro¬ 
cure his return. Just previous to the battle of Platea, Mardo- 
nius, commander of the Persian forces, sought by enormous 
bribes to detach the Athenians from the common Grecian 
-cause. At this time Aristides was principal of the Archons. 
Turning in great indignation to the ambassadors who had 
come to corrupt the fidelity of his countrymen, and pointing 
with his hand to the sun, he exclaimed: 

“Be assured that, so long as that luminary shall continue 
his course, the Athenians will be mortal enemies to the Per¬ 
sians, and will not cease to take vengeance on them for ravag¬ 
ing their lands and burning their houses and temples.” 

He commanded the Athenian force of eight thousand at the 
battle of Platea, and personally contributed greatly to the 
victory. The limits of this sketch will not admit of particular 
mention of his military achievements, by which he acquired 
imperishable renown as a great and successful general in the 
most glorious epoch of Grecian warfare. His name will be for¬ 
ever associated in history with Platea and Salamis, and all the 
great engagements of his time where Grecian valor swept to 
victory. The command of the expedition fitted out by the 
allied Grecian cities in 477 B. C. was committed to him. 

The patriotism and prudence, the mildness, justice, and 
integrity of Aristides won the favor of all Greece, and secured 
for his own state the supremacy in the confederation. He was 
selected to determine the amount which each state should pay 
toward the expenses of the Persian war. The common treasure 
of Greece was deposited in the island of Delos, and a tax was 


110 


ARISTIDES. 


levied upon each city proportioned to its revenue; and for the' 
faithful discharge of this difficult and delicate commission, it 
was of the utmost importance to choose a man of tried and 
the most unquestionable rectitude. All the allied cities con¬ 
curred in appointing Aristides as the only one who could safely 
be entrusted with the charge of the public treasury. And none 
ever had reason to regret the choice. In such an office, in 
which to escape public odium is considered extraordinary 
success, Aristides exercised so much disinterested zeal and 
fidelity, so much care, probity, and wisdom, as to give cause of 
complaint to none; and those times were considered ever after- 
as the golden age: that is, the period in which Greece attained 
its highest pitch of virtue and happiness. The wise and equit¬ 
able conduct of Aristides secured for him to the latest posteritjr 
the glorious surname of The Just. 

History does not mention the exact time when, nor place- 
where he died; but then it pays a glorious tribute to his 
memory -when it assures us that this man, truly greater than 
a conqueror of many cities, justly merited the title bestowed 
upon him ; and confirms it by the fact, that after having pos¬ 
sessed the highest employments in the republic, and having 
had the absolute disposal of its treasures, he died poor, and 
did not leave money enough to defray the expenses of his. 
funeral; so that the government was obliged to bear the charge 
of it, and to maintain his family. 

He is considered one of the most illustrious statesmen, and 
one of the purest patriots of antiquity, and the most virtuous 
and disinterested man of any age or country. The love of the 
public good was the spring of all his actions. The constancy 
and faithfulness, and incorruptible integrity, the sincerity and 
purity of purpose which appeared all through his long 
public career, fully entitled him to the esteem, the generosity, 
and gratitude of his countrymen, and the respect and admira¬ 
tion of those who value these qualities for all time. He acquired 
the appellation of “The Just,” not by one action, but by the; 
meritorious conduct of his whole life. 


Ill 



HERACLITUS. 


HERACLITUS. 

“One pitied, one condemned the woeful times; 

One laughed at follies, and one wept o’er crimes.” 

This old couplet may be justly applied to Heraclitus and 
Democritus, celebrated through the centuries as the weeping 
and the laughing philosophers. It is usually supposed that 
these appellations indicated the characteristics of these two 
sages — the first looking upon life as a tragedy, the latter as a 
comedy. The common opinion that Heraclitus gave himself 
up to constant weeping over the vices and follies of his fellow 
men, is not well substantiated by biographical data; but that 
he was of a melancholy mood, studious and unsocial, and that 
he surrendered the intercourse of the world for the solitude of 
mountains, is better authenticated. It is more reasonable to 
conclude that he was a man of a haughty and gloomy temper. 

Not much is known of him save in connection with the 
philosophy he taught. Indeed, but little more is certainly 
known of his life than that he was born at Ephesus, 503 B. C.; 
that he was tendered the supreme magistracy by his fellow 
citizens, which he persistently refused because of their dissolute 
morals; that he often occupied himself playing with children 
near the temple of Diana; that sickened with the civil and 
social corruption of his native city, he withdrew to the moun¬ 
tains in virtuous scorn; and that Darius of Persia honored 
him with an invitation to his court, which he rudely refused in 
a contemptuous letter, as follows: 

“Heraclitus of Ephesus to the king Darius, son of Hys- 
taspes, health! All men depart from the paths of truth and 
justice. They have no attachment of any kind but avarice; 
they only aspire to a vain glory with the obstinacy of folly. 
As for me, I know not malice; I am the enemy of no one. I 
utterly despise the vanity of Courts, and never will place my 
foot upon Persian ground. Content with little, I live as I 
please.” 


112 


HERACLITUS. 




Like all ascetics, the aim of his life seems to have been to 
^explore the depths of his own nature. To better effect this, 
and actuated by a sort of misanthropic madness, he retired to 
the mountains, lived on herbs and roots, and gave up his days 
to morbid meditation. He was the founder of a distinct school 
•of philosophy, but which, in the course of time, has been con¬ 
founded with other systems, and to a great extent incorporated 
into them. His principal work was a “Treatise on Nature,” of 
which some fragments have been handed down to us. He 
affected the style of a Sibyl, and is in places so concise and 
•enigmatical, as to be almost unintelligible.' Socrates read this 
work, and said that it was good so far as he could understand 
it. In consequence of the oracular and mysterious language in 
which he expressed himself, he was called “The Obscure.” 

Many of the ideas of Heraclitus have not been superseded 
by those of the most advanced thinkers of modern ages. He 
anticipated Hegel with his celebrated doctrine of all things as 
a perpetual “flux and reflux.” He conceived the first principle 
of everything to be fire — not fire in its intensest state, or 
flame, but fire as a warm, dry ether, a spontaneous vapor and 
force. This fiery force was the beginning of the Cosmos, or 
TJniverse. He says: “The world was made neither by God nor 
man; and it was, and is, and ever shall be, an everlasting fire 
in due measure self-enkindled, and in due measure self-extin- 
: guished.” 

With him fire was the semi-symbol of life, activity and 
intelligence. It possessed the same signification in his philo¬ 
sophy that water did in the system of Thales, and air in that 
of Anaximenes. Fire, forever bursting into flame, and passing 
into ashes, smoke and ether, he proclaimed the first principle 
of the ever changing, restless flux of things, which are ever 
becoming, but which never are —in other words —God, or the 
One. He says: “ All is convertible into fire, and fire into all, 
just as gold is converted into wares, and wares into gold.” If 
we accept the word fire in the sense of heat, light, and elec¬ 
tricity, the sense in which it was used by Heraclitus, the parallel 
will be striking between the preceding passage, and the follow¬ 
ing from Herbert Spencer: “Those modes of the Unknowable 
which we call motion, heat, light, and chemical affinity, and 


so forth, are alike transformable into each other, and into 
those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as sen¬ 
sation, emotion, thought; these, in their turn, being directly 
or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes.” 

Heraclitus held that motion is essential to matter, or to use 
his own words, “all is in motion; there is no rest or quietude.” 
He thus beautifully illustrates his statement of the eternal 
motion, and the flux and reflux of matter: “No one has ever 
been twice on the same stream; for different waters are con¬ 
stantly flowing down; it dissipates its waters and gathers them 
again — it approaches and it recedes — it overflows and falls.” 
"With him, motion and life were one. Therefore, eternal motion 
was the life of the Universe. Every motion tended to some 
end in the overlasting evolution of life. He supposed that 
there was in fire a sort of inherent tendency to constantly 
transform itself into certain forms of being, which would 
inherently possess like longings to transmute themselves into 
still other determinate forms. 

He regarded death as but a change of form. He taught 
that all the phenomena of nature are produced by the antag¬ 
onism of forces, viz, attraction and repulsion. The result of 
these opposite tendencies in the Universe is the most perfect 
harmony. The great Cosmos is made up of contraries. These 
same conflicting impulses, like the lyre and the bow, are pro¬ 
ductive of harmony. All things are produced by this conflict 
between opposites. All life is the result of this ceaseless strife, 
the tendency of which is to simply split in two that which was 
one. Heraclitus was the first philosopher to teach the ceaseless 
change of matter, and the absolute life of the Universe. Only 
the Eternal Being, the Supreme Harmony, is exempt from 
change. All else, all individual things, are mutable and per¬ 
ishable. Heraclitus attached no value to the wisdom of the 
world; he looked upon human lore as ignorance; he regarded 
the grandeur of men as meanness, and their pleasure as pain. 
He taught that the chiefest good was contentment. He lived a 
thoughtful and untroubled life, and tranquilly died at the age 
of sixty. 


114 


HIPPOCRATES. 


HIPPOCRATES. 

Hippocrates was known to antiquity as the “Divine Old 
Man.” Through the succeeding ages he has been known as 
the “Father of Medicine ” The great Galen declared that his 
words ought to be reverenced as the voice of God. In ancient 
times pathology and philosophy were incorporated in one 
calling. The priest, the philosopher, and the physician prac¬ 
ticed the same profession. From the origin of Greek medicine 
in the temple of Esculapius till the time of Hippocrates, all the 
diseases of men had been referred to supernatural agency. 
According to the superstitious tendency of the times, every 
physical ill and affliction was attributed to the anger of some 
offended deity. 

Hippocrates was the first Infidel who discarded the imag¬ 
inary influences then in vogue. The practice of medicine in 
his hands had sole reference to the natural course of diseases, 
instead of their celestial cause. Anciently the practice of 
physic was pursued as a liberal science; and the greatest intel¬ 
lects and profoundest philosophers were engaged in the treat¬ 
ment of disease. Thus, Philiston wrote a work on the preser¬ 
vation of health, and Praxagoras wrote a medical treatise in 
which he shows that the pulse was a measure of the force of 
disease. Neither Achilles, nor the great world-conqueror, 
Alexander of Macedon, considered the knowledge beneath their 
dignity. We learn that Patroclus exercised the healing art, and 
that he cured the wound of Euryphylus by the application of a 
certain root which immediately assuaged the pain and stopped 
the bleeding. Aristotle kept an apothecary’s shop at Athens. 
Aristotle, who sold medicines to chance customers behind his 
counter in an Athenian drug store, is the same Aristotle who 
swayed the sceptre over the philosophic world down through 
the Middle Ages. Mithradates, king of Pontus, applied him¬ 
self to the study of poisons and the discovery of antidotes. 

Hippocrates was a native of the island of .Cos, in Greece. 




HIPPOCRATES. 115 

This island was consecrated to the god Esculapius, to whom 
divine honors were there particularly rendered. His birth is 
dated 460 B. C. He is said to have been a descendant of Escu¬ 
lapius by his father, and of Hercules by his mother. He early 
applied himself to the study of natural science, more particu¬ 
larly of the human body, and the treatment of diseases. It 
was a custom at Cos at that time for all who had been success¬ 
fully treated for any distemper, t) make a memorandum of 
their symptoms and the remedies that had relieved them. 
Hippocrates profited largely by these, he having them all 
copied for his use. He received instruction from his father, 
who was a master in the art of medicine. He also received 
lessons from another celebrated physician, Herodicus, of Sicily. 
He was chief of a school called the Gymnastics, who made 
exclusive use of the exercises of the body, as well as diet and 
a regimen of life for restoring and confirming health. 

Under his instruction, Hippocrates made great proficiency in 
the art of physic, and carried the knowledge of it as high as 
possible in that age of that world. During the Peloponnessian 
war, 430 B. C., a fearful plague decimated Athens, and spread 
like a storm of death throughout Attica. This pestilence 
baffled the utmost efforts of the medical art. The most robust 
constitution fell before the infectious horror, and the greatest 
care and skill of physicians were powerless to relieve the 
afflicted. The whole country was seized with terror and despair. 
This was during the raging heat of Summer. In Athens the 
dying crawled through the streets, and laid along the side of 
fountains to which they had dragged themselves to quench 
their thirst. The bodies of the dead and the dying were piled 
one upon the other in the streets and temples, and every part 
of the city exhibited a dreadful image of death. 

Previous to the spreading of the plague into Attica, and 
while Persia was suffering fr m the great calamity, king 
Artaxerxes, informed of the high reputation of the physician of 
Cos, wrote to him, supplicating him to come into his dominions 
and arrest the dread disease. The king offered him the most 
unbounded reward and honors, and promised to give him the 
highest dignity in his court if he would come and prescribe 
for the infected people. But Hippocrates, entertaining the 


116 HIPPOCRATES. 

hatred and aversion natural to his countrymen for the Persians 
ever since the latter had invaded them, sent no otheE. answer 
than this: That he was free from either want or desires; that 
all his cares were due to his fellow-countrymen; and that he 
was under no obligation to barbarians, the declared enemies of 
Greece. The Persian king was transported with rage at this 
denial, and sent to the citizens of Cos, commanding them to 
deliver up the great physician into his hands for condign pun¬ 
ishment for his intolerable insolence, and threatening, in case 
of refusal, to lay waste their city and country in such a man¬ 
ner that not the least footsteps of it should remain. But the 
inhabitants replied, that as the menaces of Darius and Xerxes 
in former times had failed to terrify them, so the threats of 
Artaxerxes would be equally impotent; that let what would be 
the consequences, they would never surrender their fellow 
citizen, and that they would depend upon the protection of the 
gods. Hippocrates had declared that his services belonged 
wholly to his countrymen. And, indeed, he hastened to Athens 
the instant he was sent for, and never left the city till the 
pestilence had subsided. He unweariedly devoted himself to 
the service of the sick. He instructed his disciples in the 
treatment of their patients, and dispatched them into all parts 
of the country. 

The Athenians showed their gratitude for his generous and 
invaluable services by publicly decreeing to him extraordinary 
honors and rewards; not only to him, but likewise to the chil¬ 
dren of his native city of Cos, in consideration of its having 
given birth to so great and good a man. The writings of 
Hippocrates were numerous, and are still considered an excel¬ 
lent foundation for the study of medicine. They display an 
extent of knowledge truly wonderful for that early era, and 
their vivid style has been rarely equaled. In them he makes 
several confessions that argue a splendid spirit of candor and 
ingenuousness; and which only the greatest minds, fearless 
of impoverishing their reputation, are capable of making. He 
is not ashamed to own, even at the expense of his great glory, 
that he was mistaken. As Celsus says, “It is only the little 
minds, conscious of their mean abilities, who are careful to do 
nothing to compromise their undeserved reputation.” In one 


HIPPOCRATES. 


117 


r.: 

■$’ 

instance^ he frankly acknowledges an error he committed in 
dressing a wound in the head. This he did, lest others after 
him and by his example, should fall into a like error. Again 
he owns that of forty-two patients, he cured only seventeen, 
the rest dying under his hands. With the same simple candor 
he tells us in another place that he cured all his patients who 
had been attacked with a certain dangerous disorder. “Had 
they died,” he adds, “I should have said so with the same 
freedom.” He also declared that it was no dishonor to a 
physician, when he is at a loss how to act in a difficult case, 
to call in other physicians to his assistance. Whence we may 
conclude that consultations of the profession was an ancient 
custom. He introduces his work with an oath, by which he 
calls upon the gods who preside over physic to witness his 
sincere desire to faithfully discharge all the duties of his pro¬ 
fession. He obligates himself to lead a pure and irreproachable 
life, and not to dishonor his station by any action worthy of 
blame. He swears that if, in the course of his practice, he 
shall discover anything concerning his patients which ought to 
be concealed, he will inviolably observe the sacred law of 
secrecy. And he finally expresses the hope, that by such a 
course, he shall secure the esteem of posterity, and avows his 
willingness to forfeit the world’s good opinion forever, if he 
unfortunately violates these self-imposed obligations. 

His character as a truly honest man, and one of the greatest 
probity and moral worth, is fully sustained by these personal 
references in his own work, and by the general voice of numer¬ 
ous biographers. 

His estimable virtues and, disinterestedness elicited the de¬ 
served praise of contemporaries. He proposed to have physi¬ 
cians act with honor and humanity in reference to their fees, 
regulating them by the patient’s ability to pay. He mentions 
instances in which no reward should be asked or expected. 
Among other cases he particularly mentions those of strangers 
and the poor, whom all the world are bound to assist. 

His doctrine of disease was this: That the body is composed 
of humors; that these undergo changes; that health consists 
in their proper constitution and right relations; that their 
impurities and ill-adjustment produce disease. He attributed 


118 


HIPPOCRA.TES. 


the disturbance of the humors, or disease, to heat, cold, air, 
water, and a great variety of causes and surrounding physical 
circumstances. He especially studied the peculiarities of the 
human system, and how it is modified by life and climate. He 
held that the innate heat of the body varies with the period of 
life, being greatest in infancy and least in old age; and hence 
that there is a greater pre-disposition to disease at certain sea¬ 
sons of the year and at different periods of life. He referred 
diseases in general wholly to the condition or distribution of 
the humors or the blood in the system, and concluded that so 
long as these liquids are in an adulterated or unnatural state, 
disease will continue. With him the chief duty of the physi¬ 
cian was to attend very closely to the condition of his patients 
as respects their diet and exercises; for only by so doing could 
he hope to exert a control over the course of their diseases. 
Conceiving disease to be the fermentation or localization of 
these humors in some particular organ, he believed that the 
skill of the physician consisted in watching the symptoms, and 
tracing the career of the disease to that critical period where he 
could best aid Nature to eliminate them from the system. In 
fact, his notions of practice were in simply aiding Nature in 
her operations. 

These were truly surprising scientific conceptions for that 
ancient epoch. And considering the age in which he lived, 
and that his study of medicine was almost entirely confined to 
experience, we cannot but admire his masterly advance in the 
then experimental profession of medicine. But perhaps his 
chiefest and most conspicuous merit in the eyes of the modern 
investigator was in utterly rejecting the superstitious theories 
of his time. In discarding the f current notions of the age 
respecting the imaginary jurisdiction of the gods over disease, 
and subjecting himself to the opposition and reprehension of 
those connected with the temple of Esculapius, whose interest 
consisted in referring all the ills of humanity to supernatural 
influences, he bequeathed an illustrious example to all who 
should succeed him in his noble profession, encouraging them 
not to hesitate in encountering the passions and the prejudices 
of the present for the sake of truth and discovery, but to trust 
their reward to time and the just appreciation of posterity. 


HIPPOCRATES. 


119 


His influence in the medical schools may be traced through 
many succeeding centuries. 

He had a great number of pupils, from whom he exacted an 
oath similar to that imposed upon himself, to the effect that 
they would never abuse their trust by criminal practice, nor 
divulge professional secrets. Among the most noteworthy of 
his discoveries is that of critical days in fevers. He merits the 
foremost rank among the reformers of antiquity for having 
substituted observation and experiment for speculative the¬ 
ories. 

He died at Larissa at a very advanced age, variously stated 
between eighty-five and one hundred and nine years. He left 
two sons, who acquired great reputation as physicians. 

He was an original thinker and inventor, and as such is 
unrivalled by any physician of ancient or modern times. He 
was a Sage, and his grand deductions in philosophy and 
pathology fully substantiate the claims for wondrous wisdom. 
He was an Infidel, because he disbelieved the crude conceptions 
of his time respecting the theological theories of disease. His 
rare talents, his superior sagacity and signal success, and his 
devoted humanity, merit the esteem and admiration of man¬ 
kind ; and as an Infidel, a Sage, and a Thinker, he is entitled 
;to a prominent place in this —our ink and paper Pantheon. 


120 


PARMENIDES. 


PARMENIDES. 

Parmenides was a celebrated Greek philosopher of the Elea- 
tic sect, who flourished in the early part of the fifth century 
B. C. He was a native of Elea, possessed a large patrimony, 
and lived in splendor in the earlier part of his life. He was 
distinguished in civil affairs, and drew up for his fellow citi¬ 
zens a code of excellent laws, to which their magistrates com¬ 
pelled them to swear obedience. He at length withdrew from 
the public affairs of life, and confined himself exclusively to 
study and philosophy. 

He was said to have been a disciple of Xenophanes, and also 
to have listened to the instructions of Anaximander. He was 
much distinguished as a pattern of virtue, and by his compan¬ 
ions was often pointed out as a modej. of excellence. 

He also possessed great literary ability, and wrote the doc¬ 
trine of his school in verses, of which, however, but a few 
fragments remain. 

Plato, in his dialogue which bears the name of “ Parmenides,” 
attempts to give the views of this philosopher, but doubtless 
blends much of his own in place of them. 

At the age of forty-five, Parmenides went to the city of 
Athens. Plato was much interested in him, and called him 
“The Great.” Aristotle denominated him the “Chief of the 
Eleatics.” Parmenides became a distinguished teacher, and 
among his pupils were such conspicuous men as Empedocles 
and Zeno. 

The main philosophical opinions of Parmenides have been 
handed down in the fragments of his hexameter poem, enti¬ 
tled, “On Nature.” They may be represented in the following 
short outline: Assuming that sense and intellect are the only 
two sources of knowledge, he held that these furnished the 
mind with two kinds of ideas entirely distinct. Sense is depend¬ 
ent on the variable organization of the individual, therefore its ; 
evidence is changeable, false, and nothing else but mere appear- 


PARMENIDES. 


121 


ance. Intellect is the source in all individuals, and therefore 
its evidence is constant, true and complete reality. The sub¬ 
ject is thus divided into two branches—physics and meta¬ 
physics; the former enquiring, What is the character of an 
appearance ? and the latter, What is the character of reality 
or being? Metaphysics, or the science of being, is discussed in 
the first of the two books of the poem. Being, he asserted, is 
eternal. For if it be non-eternal, it must either have sprung 
out of Being or non-Being. It cannot have sprung out of Being, 
since it cannot precede itself; and it cannot have sprung out 
of non-Being, since non-Being is utterly inconceivable. It is, 
therefore, eternal. 

Being is also identical with thought. For as it is eternal, it 
must be unchangeable, identical, unique, unity itself. Since it 
is unity, it must embrace all objects, and consequently all the 
thoughts that are occasioned by these objects. Being is there¬ 
fore identical with thought. 

After the first book of poems had evolved an ideal system 
of metaphysics, the second book proceeds to treat of the science 
of appearances or physics. A theory of the physical world is 
then laid down according to the principles of natural philoso¬ 
phy of that day. 

Parmenides was led by Xenophanes on one hand, and Dio- 
chsetes on the other, to the conviction of the duality of human 
thought. His Beason, i. e., the Pythagorean logic, taught him 
there is nought existing but The One (which he did not with. 
Xenophanes call God; he called it Being). His Sense, on the 
other hand, taught him that there were many things because 
of his manifold sensuous impressions. Hence he maintained 
two Causes and two Principles —the one to satisfy the Keason,, 
the other to accord with the explanations of Sense. 

Parmenides maintained a distinct and defined notion of the 
uncertainty of human knowledge. He maintained that thought 
was delusive because dependent upon organization. He had as 
clear a conception of this celebrated theory as any of his 
successors, and in his poem, thus expresses himself upon this 
subject: 

“ Such as to each man is the nature of his many-jointed limbs. 


122 


PARMENIDES. 


Such also is the intelligence of each man; for it is 

The nature of limbs (organization) which thinketh in men, 

Both in one and in all; for the highest degree of organization gives 
the highest degree of thought.” 

This may be called the central point in his system. By it 
he was enabled to avert what was deemed absolute skepticism, 
while maintaining the uncertainty of ordinary knowledge. 

On the science of Being, Parmenides did not widely differ 
from Xenophanes and Pythagoras. He taught there was but 
one Being; non-Being was impossible. 

His conception of the identity of thought and existence is 
expressed in the following literal translation of his remarkable 
Verses: 

'‘Thought is the same thing as the causing thought; 

For without the thing in which it is announced 

You cannot find the thought; for there is nothing, nor shall be, 

Except the existing.” 

As the only existence was The One, it follows that The One 
and Thought are identical. 

Respecting the second or physical doctrine of Parmenides, 
it may be briefly said, that believing it necessary to give a 
science of appearances, he sketched out a programme according 
to the views held in his time. He denied motion in the 
abstract, but admitted that according to appearances there was 
motion. 

He represented the mere logical and vigorous side of Xenoph¬ 
anes, from which the physical element is largely banished, by 
being condemned to the domain of uncertain sense and knowl¬ 
edge. The ideal element was principally nourished in his spec¬ 
ulations. If he avoided skepticism as has been stated, it was 
claimed of his philosophy that it led directly to skepticism. 

“In his Exposition of the Uncertainty of Knowledge,” says 
Lewes, “he retained a saving clause, namely: that of the 
certainty of reason. It only remained for successors to apply 
the same skepticism to ideas of reason, and Pyrrhonism was 
complete.” 


DEMOCRITUS. 


123 


DEMOCRITUS. 

Democritus is denominated the “Laughing Philosopher.” 
It is not now known whence arose his claim to this title. We 
may suppose that he was naturally satirical, and that he sub¬ 
jected truth to the test of ridicule. Perhaps he considered an 
outward manifestation of mirthfulness a sort of philosophical 
antidote for the common calamities of earth, and that 

“It is better to laugh than be crying. 

When we think how life’s moments are flying.” 

His birth-place was Abdara, in Thrace, between 490 and 460 
B. C. He was of a noble and wealthy family, and his father 
was a man of immense fortune. His riches were such that he 
was enabled to entertain the royal conqueror, Xerxes, during 
his passage through Abdara. As a recompense for this munifi¬ 
cent hospitality, the mighty monarch left some of his attendant 
Magi to instruct the young Democritus. He was thus early 
initiated in all the mysterious wisdom of the Persian priest¬ 
hood. It was these Chaldean sages who inspired him with a 
passion for travel and a longing to view the wonders of other 
lands. Having inherited one hundred talents upon the division 
of his father’s estate, he was enabled to travel in Greece, Persia, 
and India, in pursuit of knowledge. Says he: “I, of all men of 
my day, have traveled over the greatest extent of country, 
exploring the most distant lands; most climates and countries 
have I visited, and listened to the most experienced of men; 
and in the calculations of line-measuring no one hath surpassed 
me, not even the Egyptians, amongst whom I sojourned five 
years.” After having spent his patrimony in acquiring the 
lore of other lands, he returned to the place of his birth. The 
wondrous wisdom which he brought back, to the admiring 
Abdarites, seemed divine. He made a useful exhibition of the 
great knowledge gleaned in his travels to his astonished and 
delighted fellow citizens, particularly by foretelling unexpected 
changes in the weather, and making abstruse astronomical cal- 


124 


DEMOCRITUS. 


culations. Hs became, ere long, the most powerful personage 
in the country: an object of a nation’s unspeakable pride. 
Had he submitted to the wishes of his countrymen, he would 
have been exalted to the summit of sovereign supremacy. But 
he wisely and persistently refused all the political preferments 
which they sought to lavish upon him. 

It will not be attempted in this short sketch to give the 
many traditional anecdotes respecting him. Unquestionably the 
most of them are improbable and unauthenticated. But all the 
accounts of him that can now be collected justify us in credit¬ 
ing his having led a pure, and quiet, and useful life, and his 
dying at a very advanced age in tranquillity and peace. But 
little more can be ascertained concerning his long and unevent¬ 
ful career. 

His doctrines radically differed from all that had been pre¬ 
viously taught in other schools. The peculiar axiom of his 
philosophy was that “only atoms and space exist.” He* 
expressed the proposition thus: “The sweet exists only irr 
form, the bitter in form, the hot in form, the cold in form, 
color in form; but in casual reality only atoms and space* 
exist.” In other words, he held that sensible, tangible things 
exist in form only, and have no real existence—that sweetness, 
color, etc., are only sensible images constantly emanating from 
things, and that our perception of objects solely depends upon 
the disposition of our bodies with respect to what, so to speak, 
falls in upon us. The grand problem which Democritus sought 
to solve was, “How do we perceive external things?” He 
could not accept the commonly received answer that man per¬ 
ceives through his senses. 

He contended that many of our conceptions are not only 
independent, but in defiance of the senses. He was the first 
to ask the question, “How is it that the senses jrerceive? »* 
The propounding of this simple question formed an important 
era in the history of philosophy. 

Previous to Democritus the reports of the senses had never 
been suspected. All reasoning had been based on the accuracy 
of the senses. It had been the universal belief among men 
that what they saw really existed, and existed as they saw it. 
This had never been disputed before his day. 


DEMOCRITUS. 


125 


The modus operandi by which the senses perceive external 
things, he explained by a bold and ingenious hypothesis. He 
thought that all things were constantly throwing off images of 
themselves, which, after assimilating to themselves the sur¬ 
rounding air, enter the soul by the pores of the sensitive 
organ. Thus the aqueous humors of the eye receive the 
image of whatever is presented to it. The mind becomes a 
mirror reflecting the images. He did not believe that the 
figure thrown off correctly corresponded with the object throw¬ 
ing it off, but w r as only a representative of it, subject to varia¬ 
tions in its passage to the mind. The images themselves thus 
being imperfect, our knowledge is necessarily imperfect. 

Democritus’ doctrine of atomism is one of the subtlest ever 
yet reached by human speculation. He declared that atoms, 
invisible and intangible, were the primary elements; that the 
atom, being indivisible, is necessarily one, and being one, is 
self-exis:ent; and that all things were but modes of the 
arrangement of atoms, and depended upon their configuration, 
combination, and position. He held that quality only pertained 
to the atom when in combination with other atoms, changing 
Its quality with every change of combination. He held that all 
atoms were alike in esse, accepting the axiom that only “ like 
can act upon like.” The only difference in things are those of 
phenomena, and these depend wholly upon arrangement and 
combination of atoms. 

The atomic theory of Democritus, in many respects, presents 
a close analogy to that which now prevails. He believed the 
Universe is composed of empty space and indivisible atoms, 
infinite in number, and which by their various activities and 
affinities produce all the phenomena of nature. He taught the 
eternity of matter, and that the mind or soul is the motion of 
round fiery particles. Many of his theories were adopted by 
Epicurus, and were immortalized in the poem of Lucretius, 
De Rerum Natura. He was a contemporary with Plato, and his 
style is equally as charming. He lived a pure and stainless 
life for upwards of a hundred years, and left a name and 
system of philosophy that have survived the ruins of twenty- 
three centuries. 


126 


SOCRATES. 


SOCRATES. 

All who are not utterly incapable of appreciating goodness* 
greatness, wisdom, and virtue, outside the petty bounds of 
their own creed, revere the name of Socrates, the Athenian 
martyr. 

This hero and philosopher was born 469 B. C., and suffered 
death 399 B. C., at the age of seventy. His father was a sculp¬ 
tor, his mother was a mid-wife. Born in poverty and deprived 
of all the advantages of culture which wealth alone can secure, 
he nevertheless, by virtue of his own original genius, attained 
the highest pinnacle of wisdom; and to-day this sublime old 
worthy towers the most conspicuous among the great figures 
of ancient Greece. Socrates made Truth his -sours mistress; 
and with tireless energy did his great, pure, wise soul toil after 
perfect communion with her. He was a perfect contrast to the 
brilliant Sophists of his time. While they professed to know 
and teach everything, he “only knew that he knew nothing.” 
He denied that anything could be taught. His mission was to 
bring out the thoughts of others. This he humorously explain¬ 
ed by reference to his mother’s profession, viz.: that of a 
mid-wife. He was an accoucher for men pregnant with ideas, 
as his mother was for women in labor. After having assisted 
ideas to their birth, he then examined them to see if they 
were fit to live. He welcomed the worthy and destroyed the 
false. And this he did without any pecuniary reward, always 
steadfastly refusing every bribe. 

According to the description given of him by Aristotle, his 
personal appearance was extremely forbidding. His flattened 
nose, with wide and upturned nostrils, his thick lips and pro¬ 
jecting eyeballs, his unwieldy belly and squab figure, were all 
subjects of ridicule and contempt among his antagonists. 
While the brilliant Sophists in their gorgeous, flowing robes 
were reaping money and renown, the poor and ill-clad son of 
Sophroniscus, rude and ungainly in his gait, wandered barefoot 
through, the streets of Athens. Sometimes he stood for hours 


SOCRATES. 


127 


in silent meditation, again he promenaded the market-place, 
disputing with all who would engage with him. 

Temperance was considered by Socrates to be the foundation 
of every virtue. He was habitually abstemious, believing that 
if the body was clogged by gluttonous eating and drinking* 
the mind would immediately suffer and abate Its activity. 
“Other men,” said he, “live to eat. I eat to live.” Notwith¬ 
standing the superlative ugliness of Socrates, the witchery of 
his tongue was such that Alcibiades declared that he was forced 
to “stop his ears and flee away, that he might not be obliged 
to sit down beside him and grow old in listening to his talk /* 1 

Previously to entering upon his career as a teacher, Socrates 
had performed military service in three battles, and had dis¬ 
tinguished himself in each. The prize of bravery awarded to 
him in the first he nobly relinquished in favor of Alcibiades, 
whom he wished to encourage to deserve such honor. His 
powers of endurance were wonderful. In spite of the severity 
of winter, when* the ice and snow were thick upon the ground, 
he went barefoot and lightly clad. 

His bravery as a senator equaled his bravery as a soldier. 
During the government of the Thirty Tyrants, he was sum¬ 
moned to bring Leon of Salamis to Athens. Leon had obtained 
the right of Athenian citizenship, but fearing the rapacity of 
the tyrants, had retired to Salamis. Socrates steadfastly refused 
to bring back Leon. He says himself, that the “ Government, 
although it was so powerful, did not frighten me into doing 
anything unjust.” He would undoubtedly have suffered death 
on account of this, if the government had not soon been 
broken up. 

Socrates, as Lewes observes, was one of the very few exam¬ 
ples of inflexible justice of whom we have record, able at once 
to resist the power of tyrants and defy the despotism of mobs. 

On another occasion he unflinchingly faced the clamorous 
mob. While a senator, during a period of great public excite¬ 
ment, he refused to put an illegal question to the vote. The 
people became furious; but Socrates remained firm, defied the 
theats of the menacing mob, declaring that he stood there to 
administer justice. He became well known to every citizen of 
Athens. He could not enter the market-place without attract- 


5 


128 


SOCEATES. 


ing general attention. He talked with every one, young or old, 
rich or poor, who sought to address him, and in the hearing of 
all who stood by. Socrates did not commence teaching till 
about the middle of his career. We cannot avoid speaking of 
bum as a teacher, though he himself disclaimed the appella¬ 
tion. His practice was to frequent the public walks, the 
booths, and the market-place, and to converse with all who 
came in his way. He announced himself an accoucher of ideas. 
It has even been claimed that he never promulgated any sys¬ 
tem of his own. While concerning himself with ethical virtues 
he also reasonably sought the essence of things. Though his 
principal topics were Man and Society, yet he was much more 
than a mere moralist. He indulged in no physical speculations 
which he deemed beyond the reach of the human intellect. 

The fact that Plato and Aristotle called Socrates master, 
suffices to show the place he occupied in the history of philos¬ 
ophy. He made a new epoch. The philosophers who preceded 
him endeavored to explain the phenomena of external matter; 
he gave up all speculations, and directed his sdle attention to 
the nature of knowledge. He built no hypothesis, never spec¬ 
ulated at random. He sought to realize the inscription at 
Delphos, “Know Thyself.” He is represented as saying to 
Plato: “I am not yet able, according to the Delphic inscrip¬ 
tion, to know myself; and it appears to me very ridiculous, 
while ignorant of myself, to inquire into what I am not con¬ 
cerned in.” He considered virtue to be identical with knowl¬ 
edge. Said he: “Only the wise man can be brave, just, or tem¬ 
perate. Vice of every kind is ignorance. If a man is cow¬ 
ardly, it is because he does not rightly appreciate the importance 
of life and death. He thinks death an evil, and flees it. If he 
were wise, he would know that death is a good thing, or, at the 
worst, an indifferent one, and therefore would not shun it.” 

Socrates was the first to give the doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul a philosophical basis, though he was not the first 
to teach the doctrine. He discourses thus with Aristodemus: 
“ The most excellent gift of the gods to man is that soul they 
have infused into him, which so far surpasses what is else¬ 
where to be found; for by what animal, except man, is even 
the existence of those gods discovered, who have produced. 


SOCRATES. 


129 


, V* 


y. ' 

£*,,. V 


■ 4 ; 


and still uphold, in such regular order, this beautiful and 
stupendous frame of the Universe? It is evidently apparent 
that he who at the beginning made man, endued him with 
senses because they were good for him; eyes wherewith to 
behold whatever w r as visible; and ears, to hear whatever was 
to be heard; for say, Aristodemus, to what purpose should 
odors be prepared, if the sense of smelling had been denied; 
or why the distinctions of bitter and sweet, of savory and 
unsavory, unless a palate had likewise been given, conveniently 
placed, to arbitrate between them and declare the difference? 
Is not that Providence in a most eminent manner conspicuous, 
which, because the eye of man is so delicate in its context¬ 
ure, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, whereby to 
secure it, which extend of themselves whenever it is needful, 
and again close when sleep approaches? Are not these eyelids 
provided, as it were, with a fence on the edge of them, to 
keep off the wind and guard the eye? Is it not to be admired 
that the ears should take in sounds of every sort, and yet are 
not too much filled with them ? That the fore-teeth of the 
animal should be formed in such a manner as is evidently 
best suited for the cutting of its food, as those on the side for 
grinding it to pieces ? And canst thou still doubt, Aristodemus, 
whether a disposition of parts like this should be the work of 
chance, or of wisdom and contrivance? But further seeing, 
thou thyself art conscious of reason and intelligence, supposest 
thou there is no intelligence elsewhere? Thou knowest thy 
body to be a small part of that wide extended earth which 
thou everywhere beholdest; the moisture contained in it thou 
also knowest to be a small portion of that mighty mass of 
waters, whereof seas themselves are but a part, while the rest 
of the elements contribute out of their abundance to thy form¬ 
ation. It is the soul then alone, that intellectual part of us, 
which is come to thee by some lucky chance, from I know not 
where. If so be, there is indeed no intelligence elsewhere; 
and we must be forced to confess that this stupendous Uni¬ 
verse, with all the various bodies contained therein, equally 
amazing, whether we consider their magnitude or number, 
whatever their use, whatever their order, all have been pro¬ 
duced, not by intelligence, but by chance V* 


130 


SOCRATES. 


Here is another passage equally deserving attention: “And 
he who raised this wondrous Universe, and still upholds the 
mighty frame, who perfected every part of it in beauty and 
goodness, suffering none of these parts to decay through age, 
but renewing them daily with unfading vigor; even he, the 
Supreme God, who performeth all these wonders, still holds 
himself invisible, and it is only in his works that we are capa¬ 
ble of admiring him. For, consider these ministers of the 
Gods, whom they employ to execute their bidding, remain to 
us invisible. For though the thunderbolt is shot from on high, 
and breaketh in pieces whatever it findeth in its way, yet no 
one seeth it when it falls, when it strikes, or when it retires; 
neither are the winds discernible to our sight, though we 
plainly behold the ravages they everywhere make, and with, 
ease perceive what time they are rising. And if there be any¬ 
thing in man partaking of the divine nature, it must surely be 
the soul which governs and directs him; yet no one considers 
this as an object of the sight. Learn, therefore, not to despise 
those things which you cannot see; judge of the greatness of 
the power by the effects which are produced, and reverence the 
Deity.” 

Such is the language of the grand old Deist, who thus dis¬ 
coursed of a supreme God and individual immortality over four 
hundred years before the supposed advent of the Judean 
teacher, and whom Christians regard as a philosophical pagan 

Much has been written concerning the demon by which it is 
claimed Socrates believed himself attended. Some writers 
have understood this to be purely allegorical; others that it 
only meant conscience. Socrates speaks of obeying the voice 
of this demon, on critical occasions in his life, when it warned 
him against any step he proposed to take. Whenever its voice 
was unheard, he considered his actions agreeable to the Deity. 
Christian writers have not scrupled to represent him as having 
been guided by the voice of a genius, and hence have charged 
him with having been a superstitious man. 

At last the noble and reverend old philosopher who had 
enunciated such sublime conceptions of the gods, had to stand 
before the tribunal of the state and answer to the charge of 
impiety. The indictment against him ran thus: “Socrates 


SOCRATES. 


131 


offends against the laws in not having respect to those gods 
whom the city respects, and introducing other new deities: he 
also offends against the laws in corrupting the youth; the 
penalty due is death.” Socrates treated these charges with con¬ 
tempt. Sentence of death was pronounced: “death by poison.” 

Then the cendemned hero stood up before his unjust judges, 
and addressed them in probably the grandest speech that ever 
proceeded from the mouth of a mortal. “Not much time will 
be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you 
will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you 
killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even 
though I am not wise, when they want to reproach you. If 
you had waited a little while, your desire would have been 
fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in 
years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am old 
and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, 
and my accusers are keen and quick; and the faster runner, 
which is unrighteousness, has ove: taken them. And now I 
depart hence, condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, 
and they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer 
the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my 
award—let them abide by theirs. 

“And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain 
prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and that is the hour 
in which men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy 
to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death, 
punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will 
surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to 
escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. 
But that will not be as you suppose; far otherwise. For I say 
that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; 
accusers whom hitherto I have restrained; and as they are 
younger they will be more severe with you, and you will be 
more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men 
you can avoid the accuser censuring your lives, you are mis¬ 
taken ; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or 
honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crush¬ 
ing others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the 
prophecy which I utter before my departure, to the judges who 


132 


SOCRATES. 


have condemned me. Still I have a favor to ask of them. 
When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends! 
to punish them! and I would have you trouble them, as I have 
troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything 
more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something 
when they are really nothing, then reprove them, as I have 
reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought 
to care, and thinking that they are something when they are 
really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have 
received justice at your hands. The hour of departure has 
arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which 
is better God only knows.” 

Socrates was remanded to prison, and the interval of thirty 
days which elapsed before his death was passed in high dis¬ 
course with his friends on the existence of Deity, the immor¬ 
tality of the soul, and similar subjects of imperishable interest. 
During this time his friends had made every arrangement for 
his escape; but no persuasion could prevail upon him to vio¬ 
late the laws of Athens, or to flee from death. And at last the 
moment arrived when he was to drink the fatal hemlock. 

The last scene is thus given in Plato’s “Phsedo.” “When he 
had taken the bath liis children were brought to him (he had 
two young sons and an elder one)—and the women of his family 
also came, and he talked to them, and gave them a few direc¬ 
tions in the presence of Crito.” (The jailer here enters with 
the poison, and professing his belief that Socrates is the 
noblest, gentlest, and best of men, desired forgiveness for com¬ 
ing upon so unthankful an errand, and departs in tears. 
Socrates bids Crito tell the man to prepare the poison forth¬ 
with, and refuses further delay as an undignified paltering with 
fate.) “Crito when he heard this made a sign to the servant; 
and the servant went in and remained for some time, and then 
returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. 

“Socrates said: ‘ You, my good friend, who are experienced in 
these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed.’ 

“The man answered; ‘You have only to walk about until 
your legs are heavy, and then lie down, and the poison will 
act.* At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in 
the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or 


SOCRATES. 


133 


change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his 
eyes, as his manner was, took the cup. Then holding it to- his 
lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. 
Hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow: 
but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had 
finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite 
of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered 
my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping 
over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having 
lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he 
found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and 
moved away, and I followed; and at that moment Apollodorus, 
who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry 
which made cowards of us all. 

“Socrates alone retained his calmness. ‘What is this strange 
outcry ?’ he said, * I sent the women away in order that they 
might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man 
should die in peace.’ 

“After walking about until his legs failed, he lay down upon 
his back, and after a while became stiff and cold. Said Crito, 
‘Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the 
wisest, the justest, and the best of all the men whom I have 
ever known.’ ” 

After ages have cherished the memory of the virtues of the 
martyred Athenian; and while the page of history endures- 
which records his grand life and death, tear-flushed eyes and 
glowing cheeks will attest the influence of his career upon the 
hearts of men. Socrates furnishes the examplar for the young 
aspiring minds of all the subsequent ages; and he stands out' 
as the grandest figure in the world’s Pantheon—the bravest, 
truest, simplest, and wisest of mankind. 


134 


PLATO. 


PLATO. 

Greece, the classic cradle-land of republicanism and relig¬ 
ion, of poetry, painting, and philosophy —Greece, with her 
embossed, evergreen isles, her gorgeous skies, with her sun- 
kissed seas and sylph-haunted fountains—Greece, rich in her 
genii and gods, her legends and olden oracles, boastful of her 
Hesiod and her Homer, her .poets and philosophers, historians 
and moral heroes; honored among the nations and celebrated 
through the ages! Greece has been the school-mistress of the 
world. Her words of wisdom were old before Christianity had 
birth. All the after-times have looked up and bowed in rever¬ 
ence before the grand old thinkers of her palmy period, and 
have borrowed from her wondrous treasures of knowledge. 
The name of Plato, the “Idealist,” Plato, the “Divine,” is the 
best known of all the illustrious Grecians,. His is the grand 
central figure in the intellectual Pantheon of the World. Even 
some to whom Homer is unknown have formed some dim con¬ 
ception of Plato. The young and romantic are intensely inter¬ 
ested in him as the originator of the sc-called Platonic love. 
The theologians praise him as the eloquent promulgator of 
the doctrine of the immateriality and immortality of the soul. 

Aristocles, surnamed Plato — so called from his broad brow— 
was born at Athens in the middle of May, in the year 430 B. 
C. He was of. illustrious lineage. On his maternal side he was 
connected with Solon. Like all great men, his name became 
the nucleus of many fables. He was said to be the child of 
Apollo. His mother, like the mothers of all the man-gods, was 
a virgin. The marriage between her and his father was delayed 
because Apollo had appeared to the latter in a dream, and told 
him that his betrothed wife was with child. With every advan¬ 
tage arising from wealth and an illustrious parentage, Plato 
early acquired an excellent education for that period. Like a 
true Greek, he became skilled in gymnastics, and participated 
in the Parthian and Isthmian games. He became proficient in 


PLATO. 


135 


poetry, music, and rhetoric. He placed himself under the 
instruction of Socrates. 

After remaining with Socrates ten years, he was separated 
from him by his death. He attended his beloved master dur¬ 
ing his trial, and indeed undertook to plead his cause; but the 
unjust judges would not allow him to continue his speech. 
After the death of Socrates, he visited Euclid of Megara. 
Erom thence the broad-browed and broad-shouldered philoso¬ 
pher proceeded to Cyrene to perfect himself in the mathemati¬ 
cal school of Theodoric. From Cyrene he went to Egypt in 
company with Euripides. He gathered all the knowledge that 
could be obtained from the philosophers of Cyrene and Egypt, 
from Persia and Tarentum. At last he returned to his native 
country and founded a school in the grove of Academe. This 
garden was planted with lofty trees, and adorned with statues 
and temples. It was a delightful retreat. Philosophers have 
sighed for it, and poets have sung of it: 

“ See there the olive grove of Academe, 

Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird 
Thrills her thick-warbled notes, the Summer long.” 

With the exception of three visits to Sicily, Plato passed the 
remainder of his days in the calm retirement of the Academy. 
Writing and lecturing were his chief occupations. His dia¬ 
logues have been the admiration of posterity. He lived in the 
most brilliant period of Grecian thought and action. He 
attained the advanced age of eighty-three years. 

Perhaps no man ever lived whose life and teachings exer¬ 
cised so profound an influence on the opinions of posterity as 
those of the broad-browed Plato. His philosophy was based 
upon three principles — God, Matter, and Ideas. He inferred 
the existence of God from proofs of design and intelligence 
presented by natural objects. His God is the fashioner and 
father of the Universe. He is the Supreme Intelligence, incor¬ 
poreal, without beginning, end, or change. Forms were fash¬ 
ioned by God from matter. 

Plato imputed to matter a refractory character, and consid¬ 
ered it the cause of evil. He maintained that Ideas were the 


136 


PLATO. 


only real existences. Whatever we have a perception of r 
whatever is the object of the soul’s thought, has a real and 
true existence. Objects are only material embodiments of 
ideas, and in representation are not exact; for correspondence 
between an object and its model extends only so far as circum¬ 
stances will permit. Hence we can never determine all the 
uses or functions of an idea from its material representation, 
any more than we can discover the qualities of a man from his 
portrait, no matter how perfect it may be. He taught that 
beyond this world of delusive appearances, this material world, 
there is another world, invisible, eternal, and essentially true. 
With Plato, the Beautiful is the perfect image of the True. 
Love is the longing of the soul for beauty; the attraction of 
like for like; the longing of the divinity within us for the 
divinity beyond us; and the good, which is beauty, truth, jus¬ 
tice, is God —God in his abstract state. 

Like Socrates, he advocated an untiring investigation into 
abstract ideas. He looked upon the fleeting phenomena of this 
world as merely the indications of that eternal truth for which 
he longed, as foot-marks on the perilous journey unto those 
realms of reality where his immortal soul would one day rest. 
Like other wise and meditative men before him, he held that 
sense-knowledge was only knowledge of phenomena: that 
everything called existence was but a perpetual flux — a some¬ 
thing which, always becoming, never was; that the reports 
which our senses make of these things partake of the same 
fleeting and uncertain character. He could not, therefore,, put 
his trust in them; he could not believe that time was anything: 
more than the wavering image of eternity. 

Plato believed that each individual soul is an idea; and that, 
of ideas generally, the lower are held together by the higher, 
and hence, finally, by one which is supreme; that God is the 1 
sum of ideas, and is therefore eternal and unchangeable; that 
he is the measure of all things, and that the Universe is a, 
type of him; that matter itself is an absolute negation, and is. 
the same as space; that the forms presented by our senses are; 
unsubstantial shadows, and no reality; that the Universe is< 
divided into two parts —the celestial region of ideas, and the- 
mundane region of material phenomena. These correspond to 


PLATO. 


137 


the modern conception of heaven and earth. He taught the 
immortality of the soul—that it not only is, but ever was 
immortal. Plato considered the soul as having existed through 
the eternity which is past, and that the present life is only a 
moment in our career. His doctrine implied a double immor¬ 
tality—the past eternity as well as that to come, falling within 
its scope. 

According to the superstition of his time, the spiritual prin¬ 
ciple residing in the tabernacle of the body, grew with it* 
strengthened with its strength, and acquired for each period of 
life a correspondence of form and of feature with its companion* 
the body, successively assuming the appearance of the infant,, 
the youth, the adult, the white-bearded patriarch. “The shade 
who wandered in the Stygian fields, or stood before the tri¬ 
bunal of Minos to receive his doom, was thought to correspond 
in aspect with the aspect of the body at death. It was thus 
that Ulysses recognized the forms of Patroclus and Achilles, 
and other heroes of the ten year’s siege. It was thus that the 
peasant recognized the ghost of his enemy or friend.” 

In the theology of Plato, God was the one idea amidst the 
multiplicity of ideas. He was the supreme idea. He was the 
One Being comprising within himself all other beings, the 
cause of all things, celestial and terrestrial. God represented 
the supreme idea of all existence. He was the great intelli¬ 
gence, the source of all other intelligences, the sun whose 
light illumined creation. From the mixture of the two eternal 
principles, intelligence and necessity, the world was made. 
God, or Intelligence, persuaded necessity to be fashioned 
according to excellence. He converted chaos into beauty. But* 
as there is nothing beautiful but intelligence, and as there is 
no intelligence without a soul, he placed a Soul into the body 
of the World. Matter was the great necessity which Intelli¬ 
gence fashioned. Because it was necessity, and unintelligent, 
it was evil, for Intelligence alone can be good. 

Plato held that since there was a Good, there must neces¬ 
sarily be the contrary of Good, namely, Evil; and though God 
would have made nothing evil, yet he could not prevent the 
existence of it; and that banished from heaven, its home is the 
world. But though Evil be a necessary part of the world, it is 


138 


PLATO. 


in constant struggle with the Good, and in the world of phe¬ 
nomena where Evil predominates over the Good, man must 
use his utmost endeavors to escape from it by leading the life 
of the gods, and in constant contemplation of truth and ideas. 

Plato’s views of “the Beautiful,” and of Love, may be thus 
briefly stated: Beauty is truth. It is the radiant image of that 
which is splendid in the world of ideas. It is something more 
than the mere flattery of the senses, and does not consist in 
harmonious outline and resplendent colors. Love is the long¬ 
ing of the soul for beauty; it is the bond which unites the 
human to the divine. It is that inextinguishable desire which 
like feels for like, which the divinity within us feels for the 
divinity revealed to us in beauty. This is the celebrated 
Platonic love; and though it originally meant ideal sympathy, 
communion of two souls, it has now become degraded to mean 
but little more than a maudlin, sentimental love between the 
sexes. 

Plato’s “Republic” has been universally considered the most 
interesting of his works. Many of the views set forth in this 
wonderful work are still entertained by many serious thinkers. 
It is a theory of what the State should be. States are founded 
upon the weaknesses of individual man. As he cannot live per¬ 
fectly by himself, he must live in society. This society should 
be an image of man himself. The faculties which belong to 
him must find a proper field of activity in society; and this vast 
union of intellects should form but one intelligence. Society 
could not exist without the State, and the State must have its 
rulers, which will correspond with man’s virtues: 

1st. The philosophers, who will represent Wisdom. 

2d. Its soldiers, who will represent Fortitude. 

3d. Its craftsmen, who will represent Temperance. The office 
of the rulers is to prevent any injustice in the State. 

He believed that women should share with men the toils of 
war and agriculture. “ The female dog guards sheep as well as 
the male,” was his own illustration. Then why should not 
women guard the State? And as some women manifest a capac¬ 
ity for philosophy, those should share with men the government. 
He advocated the abolition of property, since it engenders 
crimes and luxuries, and is the great disturber of social life. 


PLATO. 


139 


The State alone should have riches. In his “ Republic ” he 
developed a theory of what the State should be. Notwithstand¬ 
ing its utopian formulas, it is valuable in its suggestions on 
religion, education, and morals. Plato could see no nobler end 
in life than that of contemplating Being —than that of famil¬ 
iarizing the mind with the external Good, the Just and the 
Beautiful —of which all goodness, justice and beautiful things 
were the images. 

A few among the many of the morals and sentiments of Plato 
are here appended. It is hardly necessary to say, his morals have 
not been surpassed in exalted purity by any who have succeed¬ 
ed him. 

‘‘The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy 
things, had far better not yield to the illusion that his roguery 
is cleverness.” 

“There are two patterns set before men in Nature; one bles¬ 
sed and divine, the other godless and wretched.” 

“And they do not see in their utter lolly and infatuation, 
that they are growing like the one, and unlike the other, by 
reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is that they lead 
a life answering to the pattern which they resemble.” 

“ Honor is a divine good; no evil thing is honorable.” 

“The end and aim of all things should be to attain to the 
First Good, of which the sun is the type, and the material 
world, with its hosts of ministering spirits, is but the manifesta¬ 
tion and shadow.” 

“The perfectly just man is he who loves justice for its own 
sake; not for the honors and advantages that attend; and is 
willing to pass for unjust, while he practices the most exact jus¬ 
tice; who will not suffer himself to be moved by disgrace or 
distress, but will continue steadfast in the love of justice, not 
because it is pleasant, but because it is right.” 

It has been well said by a great author: “If the first Chris¬ 
tians had not embraced the dogmas of Plato, they would never 
have had any philosophers — any men of mind —in their party.” 

Plato' belongs to the world and to posterity. His position in 
the history of human development is first among the greatest 
minds of antiquity. The history of Greece and of philosophy 
could not be written with the name of Plato omitted. 


110 


PROTAGORAS, 


PROTAGORAS. 

The word sophistry has become the synonym of subtlety and 
deception. To day a Sophist simply signifies a false and cap¬ 
tious reasoner. But the modern sense in which the word is 
used does not correctly convey its true and original meaning. 
The current use of the term is entirely inapplicable to that 
class of men, known as Sophists, who taught eloquence, poli¬ 
tics, and philosophy in ancient Greece. 

According to Grote, “ A Sophist in the genuine sense of the 
word, was a wise man, a clever man, one who stood promi¬ 
nently before the public as distinguished for intellect or talent 
of some kind.” 

Zeller says that the name of Sophist at first merely desig¬ 
nated one who taught philosophy for pay. In its wider and 
general meaning, Solon, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Aristotle, 
were spoken of as Sophists. 

Socrates calls Plato a Sophist, and in turn was himself criti¬ 
cised as such; while Timon denominates all the philosphers as 
Sophists; showing that the term was employed with some 
vagueness even by the ancients. 

The real Sophists, or sect of philosophers thus distinguished, 
were the most celebrated of all the ancient teachers of men. 
They became particularly distinguished as instructors in the 
art of rhetoric. According to Plato and Diogones, Protagoras 
was the first who adopted the name of Sophist, and gave in¬ 
struction for pay. 

This remarkable man was born at Abdera in Thrace, about 
481 years before the Christian Era. It is said that he was a 
porter, and the inventor of a wooden machine then called the 
knot, and such as is used by the glaziers and porters of Italy 
and Greece to-day. He attracted the notice of the great 
Democritus, who raised him from his menial occupation and 
took him under his instruction. It was not long before he 
became distinguished for his eloquence and wisdom, and that 


PROTAGORAS. 


141 


subtlety in reasoning for which the Sophist have so long been 
celebrated. 

He was the great preceptor of oratory in all the principal 
places of Greece. During his second sojourn at Athens, and 
while growing in reputation and wealth, he incurred the prose¬ 
cution of the authorities for the inculcation of Atheistical doc¬ 
trines. A process was preferred against him for the propagation 
of principles which were abhorred by the Athenians as impious 
•and poisonous in the extreme. He had written a work, in the 
beginning of which was the following passage: “ Whether the 
Gods do or do not exist, is a question which I know not 
whether I ought to affirm or deny: for our understandings are 
too much clouded, and the life of man is too short for the 
solution of so nice and difficult a point.” 

The Athenians could not bear to have the existence of the 
gods made even a subject of doubt. Proclamation was made 
by t e public crier for all persons who had any copies of this 
book to bring them to the market place, where they were 
burnt as infamous - and dangerous productions; and the atheist¬ 
ical author was banished forever from all the territories of the 
Athenians. This was but a few years previous to the martyr¬ 
dom of the old sage, Socrates, by the same Athenians for 
impiety. A score of years later similar proceedings were insti¬ 
tuted against Diagoras, the Melian, for the same capital crime. 
He was brought to trial on a charge of Atheism, and only 
escaped the penalty of death by a precipitate flight. The 
Athenians set a price upon his head, and offered a large reward 
to any man who would deliver him up dead or alive. Protag¬ 
oras fled from Athens to Epirus s where he resided many years, 
promulgating his philosophy with great profit and popularity. 
He reached the age of seventy, and is stated to have lost his 
life by shipwreck, 411 B. C., while on a voyage into Sicily. 

Sextus Empirus furnishes the following brief and explicit 
.statement of his philosophical doctrines: “‘Matter,’ says Pro¬ 
tagoras, ‘is in a perpetual flux: whilst it undergoes augmen¬ 
tations and losses, the senses also are modified, according to 
the age and disposition of the body.’ He said, also, that the 
reasons of all phenomena (appearances) resided in matter as 
substrata; so that matter, in itself, might be whatever it 


PROTAGORAS. 


142 ' 

appeared to each. But men have different perceptions at dif¬ 
ferent times, according to the changes in the thing perceived.” 

In the fundamental principle of his philosophy—that sen¬ 
sation is the essential attribute of man — which was so vigor¬ 
ously confronted by Socrates and Plato — he forestalled the 
whole of the English and French philosophy w T hich arose from 
the doctrines of Locke in the eighteenth century, and which is 
probably to-day the one most universally adopted. 

That he was a teacher of most excellent morality, is sup¬ 
ported by the testimony of Xenophon and Plato. Though the 
enemies of his sect have not credited him entertaining the- 
highest abstract views of the Good, yet they all considered his 
the only ones adapted to the needs and exigencies of the times* 
in which he lived. The tenet attributed to the Sophists by 
Plato and others — such as their denial of absolute truth and 
justice, and right and wrong by nature— should only be 
regarded as a caricature or a willful misrepresentation by their 
ancient antagonists. Indeed, Protagoras has been made to utter 
the following questionable maxims: “That which appears just 
and honorable to each city, is so for that city, as long as the 
opinion is entertained.” It is needless to say that the authen¬ 
ticity of this is entirely traditionary. The Sophists were much 
disliked by their rivals, and it is not surprising that Protagoras, 
as their head, should have been calumniated by the hostile 
schools. This has been true of every great thinker who 
has sought to maintain an opinion of his own. Neither is it 
strange that the Sophists, who were quite wealthy and power¬ 
ful and excelled their opponents in rhetoric and reasoning, should 
have been the objects of zealous prejudice and aspersion. They 
were disliked by their contemporaries because of their opulence 
and power, and their memories have been traduced by later 
hostile schools of philosophy, so that to-day their very name 
has become a term of reproach. But it should be borne in 
mind that the successful have ever been the victims of envy 
and defamation. All the world’s brave enunciators of new ideas 
have been hated and aspersed and persecuted; and Protagoras 
and his sect were hated for the same reason that John Calvin 
hated Michael Servetus. The Sophists ’advocated nothing incon¬ 
sistent with the most rigid code of morals. They have been. 


PROTAGORAS. 


M3 


charged with teaching the art of “making the worse appear the 
better reason.” This charge, perhaps, was not wholly unfounded; 
but extenuating circumstances should be duly considered. They 
were preceptors of the art of disputation. The ancient Greeks; 
were notorious for their contentious nature and excessive fond¬ 
ness for litigation. The people advocated their own causes. 
They deemed a certain training in speech which would enable 
them to advocate their suits or defend themselves against accu¬ 
sations, just as essential as a training in arms for military duty. 
They did not believe that “right would ever come uppermost” 
without some special pleading in its behalf. No man could 
depend upon certain redress for injuries in the courts unless he. 
possessed the requisite power of speech to properly unfold his 
case to the magistrate, and to refute the falsehood of an artful 
antagonist. The art of the Sophists was simply what that of a 
lawyer is to-day—-that of conducting his own or client’s cause 
to the best advantage in the courts. No member of the legal 
profession to-day who does not “make the worse appear the bet¬ 
ter reason” is considered to have done his duty to his client. 
And if legal training and forensic oratory make the worse ap¬ 
pear the better reason, they also make the good appear the bet¬ 
ter; and if by the Sophists’ ingenious eloquence a scamp’s cause 
is sometimes gained, it is also true that many an honest man’s 
cause is gained and many a scamp frustrated by the same 
means. The Sophists but responded to a public demand; and 
their art, in the time of Protagoras at least, was certainly free 
from any vicious or corrupting tendencies. 

As preceptors of pure lives and propagators of excellent 
morals; as dialectical disputants and the most proficient rhetor¬ 
icians the world has ever known; as founders of the subtlest 
system of philosophy that ever puzzled the mystified metaphysi¬ 
cian, the misjudged and much censured Sophists of ancient 
Greece will yet be vouchsafed their deserved need of apprecia¬ 
tion and praise at the great unprejudiced bar of posterity. And 
the man who first adopted their name, who was driven from 
Athens because he could affirm nothing of the gods — Protagoras 
the ancient Atheist —will then surely be accorded a far worthier 
and more honorable tribute than can begiven in this limited 
notice. 


144 


DIAGORAS. 


DIAGORAS. 

As long as mankind have believed in gods, so long have there 
been Atheists. As far back as we can penetrate the chaos of 
immemorial tradition, there have been doubters and deniers, 
as well as defenders of the world’s imaginary divinities. Mon¬ 
otheists, Polytheists, Pantheists, and Atheists, doubtless lived 
; and wrangled about the gods ere the exodus from Egypt. 
.Some of the greatest thinkers and most famous philosophers 
of the ancient ages, following the force of reason, bravely and 
vigorously rose up against the theological superstitions of their 
times. 

Diagoras, the Greek poet and philosopher, was one of these. 

' He was born in the island of Melos, about 440 B. C. He was a 
contemporary with Socrates, and a disciple of Democritus, the 
Laughing Philosopher of Abdera. This great master held very 
indifferent views of the gods. His only gods were atoms. This 
•celebrated teacher of the Eleatic sect had thus expressed his 
doctrine of doubt: 

“I deny that we either know anything, or nothing. I deny 
that we know even whether we know that. I deny that we 
know whether anything exists, or whether nothing exists.” 

Diagoras was trained in this skeptical school. The unbe. 
lieving Protagoras had also been a pupil of the same distin¬ 
guished master. He had been banished from Athens, and his 
books had been burned for simply doubt as to the gods. Bui 
Diagoras did not confine himself to doubting. So outspoken 
.and audacious was his denial of the Grecian gods that he was 
surnamed the Atheist. 

One of the ancient authors gives this improbable story to 
account for his impiety. He had composed with great care a 
poetical production which he prized with the utmost pride and 
tenderness. A rival poet robbed him of this valued piece; and 
upon being prosecuted for the theft, swore he had robbed 
Diagoras of nothing, but soon after published the work in his 


DIAGORAS. 


145 


‘Own name, acquiring great reputation thereby. Diagoras judged 
that the gods, were there any, would not have permitted such 
flagrant injustice. He would sooner believe there were no gods, 
than acknowledge such as tolerated wickedness, or were pow¬ 
erless to prevent it. He witnessed the frequency of offenses 
which went unpunished, and concluded there could be no super¬ 
intending deities. He wrote books to sustain this view. The 
■above occurrence is said to have taken place at Athens. 

The efforts of the Athenians to check the progress of “impi¬ 
ety” constitute the most disgraceful blot upon the annals of 
ancient Greece. In Athens a person could clash against the 
prevailing opinions respecting gods only at the peril of his 
life. The citizens carried their respect for religion to such a 
point that they punished even controversy about the existence 
of gods as criminal and impious. It was at Athens that the 
poisoned cup was given to sage old Socrates. Protagorus pre- 
■served his life only by flight. And because Diagoras had the 
hardihood to dissent from the popular notions of the gods, he 
became the victim of perjury and unrelenting persecution. He 
was cited before the authorities to give an account of his doc¬ 
trines. Fearing for his life, he fled to Pallene, upon which 
they set a price upon his head. They promised, by sound of 
trumpet, a large reward to whoever should kill him, and double 
the sum to whoever should deliver him up alive. They caused 
this intolerant decree to be engraved upon a pillar of brass. 
A century later, and Theodorus of Cyrene, was convicted of 
.Atheism, and condemned to poison himself. 

Thus we find that, in the olden ages, man commenced the 
murder of his fellows for the maintenance of his gods. Diag¬ 
oras finally went to Corinth, where he died about the year 412 
B. C. None of his writings have been preserved. He taught 
an unexceptionable code of morals, and lived a life abjve 
reproach. And among those wonderful, gigantic intellects that, 
have served to mould the convictions of men all through the 
long procession of the centuries, we unhesitatingly include 
Diagoras, one of the most pronounced and audacious of the 
.ancient Atheists. 


148 


EUCLID. 


EUCLID. 


This Euclid, who must not be confounded with the great 
mathematician, was born at Megara, 450 B. C. He gave his early 
years to philosophy, diligently studying the writings of the older 
sages. His chief excellence consisted in dialectics, his great 
facility in which he had acquired from Zeno. 

He became acquainted with Socrates, and so fascinated was 
he by the teachings of the great Athenian that he often hazarded 
his life to listen to his inimitable conversation. It was decreed 
that any inhabitant of Megara found at Athens should be put to 
death. This was in consequence of a feud which existed between 
the two cities. Nevertheless, Euclid frequentlv braved the pen¬ 
alty, entering Athens at night in the disguise of a female. He 
was obliged to travel twenty miles to do this. 

At last, upon the death of the illustrious martyr, Plato and 
the majority of his disciples, fearing a popular outbreak of the 
Athenians, fled to Megara, where Euclid resided. After remain¬ 
ing some length of time, Plato and some of the others returned 
to Athens. The rest remained with Euclid. 

His school, called the Megaric, became very celebrated. His 
death took place about 424 B. C. The basis of his system was 
the dogma of a one, only, universal substance or existence. This 
one real existence he held to be the Good, although its speciaL 
manifestations had received different names. Euclid maintained 
that there was but one unalterable Being, and that could only 
be realized by reason. Under one aspect this one Being received 
the name of wisdom; under another God, etc. This one Good he 
held was the only Being that really exists. Everything else has 
only a transitory existence. The central idea of the Megaric 
school was the abstract idea of the Good. Euclid proclaimed 
that the only God is the Good. 

Bound by the closest ties of friendship to the martyred Soc¬ 
rates and the ‘‘divine Plato,” his name will remain forever 
associated with theirs in the memory of mankind. 


EMPEDOCLES. 


147 


EMPEDOCLES. 

Many of the meagre and marvelous accounts we get of Empe¬ 
docles have been relegated to the region of fable. There is but 
little of his personal history that is not open to question. 

According to the most trustworthy authority he was born 444 
years B. C. at Agrigentum, a city of Sicily, and one which in 
that age rivalled Syracuse in splendor. He is said to have 
inherited an immense fortune, which he spent in a somewhat 
singular manner, viz: in bestowing dowries upon poor young 
girls, and marrying them to young men of rank and fortune. It 
is also probably true that he journeyed to the far East and 
through many distant lands in quest of knowledge. He wrested 
the potent secrets of medicine and magic from Persian priests, 
and acquired proficiency in the art of prophecy. He visited 
Athens and traveled through Italy. He accumulated a marvelous 
store of learning, and became celebrated for his august majesty 
of demeanor and his miraculous power over nature. His name, 
rivals all the wonder-workers of antiquity. He became rever¬ 
enced throughout the East. It is claimed that he exercised 
power over the winds and rains, and the diseases of men. His 
reputation almost parallels that of Pythagoras. His great knowl¬ 
edge of philosophy and the sciences caused him to be looked 
upon as almost a supernatural being. His dress consisted of a 
Delphic crown, and a costly priestly robe. He was accompanied 
by a numerous train of attendants. No personage attracted such, 
notice or received such marks of distinction at the Olympic games; 
as he. 

He refused the government of Agrigentum when freely offered 
him by the citizens. The populace believed him to> have been 
possessed of more than mortal power. He is said to, have- 
restored to life people who had been dead thirty days, and to 
have cured those whom no physician could save. It was like¬ 
wise believed that he stopped epidemics and kept, away noxious 


148 


EMPEDOCLES. 


malarias. According to the old traditions, miracles were his 
pastime. 

Many marvelous stories have been created out of the uncer¬ 
tainty which surrounds his death. One relates that after a 
festival he was visibly drawn up into the heavens amid the 
radiance of celestial light. Another, and one more generally 
believed, is that he threw himself into the burning crater of 
iEtna, in order that the manner of his death might not be 
known; but the volcano, in an eruption, threw out one of his 
brazen sandals. The most probable manner of his death, how¬ 
ever, is that he went into Greece and never returned. Statues 
were erected to perpetuate his memory. Diogenes, Aristotle, and 
Quintilian award to Empedocles the invention of Rhetoric. In 
his book on “The Poets,” Aristotle speaks of Empedocles as 
“Homeric, powerful in his eloquence, rich in metaphor, and 
other poetical figures.” The following lines, in which he laments 
the delusion of the senses and human experience, affords a fair 
specimen of his style: 

“ Swift-fated and conscious, how brief is life’s pleasureless portion; 
Like the wind-driven smoke, they are carried backwards and forwards, 
Each trusting to naught save what his experience vouches. 

On all sides distracted, yet wishing to find out the whole truth, 

In vain; neither by eye nor ear perceptible to man, 

Nor to be grasped by mind; and thou, when thus thou hast wandered, 
Wilt find that no further reaches the knowledge of mortals.” 

He maintained that like could only be known by like; there¬ 
fore, through earth we learn of earth, through fire of fire, &c.; 
and as the Divine is recognized by man, it is a proof that the 
Divine exists. In his attack on the gross anthropomorphism of 
his day, he says: “God has neither head adjusted to limbs, like 
human beings, nor legs, nor hands. He is, wholly and perfectly, 
mind ineffable, holy, with rapid and swift-glancing thought per¬ 
vading the whole world.” 

In his life and moral precepts he resembled Pythagoras; like 
him he abstained from animal food and adopted the doctrine of 
metempsychosis. The following lines assert his theory concern¬ 
ing the phenomena of existence, viz.: that all things were but a 


EMPEDOCLES. 


149 




mingling and a separation of primary elements. “Fools,” he 
exclaims, 

“Who think aught can begin to be which formerly was not; 

Or, that aught which is, can perish and utterly decay! 

Another truth I now unfold- no natural birth 
Is there of mortal things, nor death’s destruction final; 

Nothing is there but a mingling, and then a separation of the mingled. 
Which are called a birth and death by ignorant mortals.” 

Empedocles modified and amalgamated the philosophies that 
had hitherto been taught. He maintained that the primary ele¬ 
ments were earth, air, fire, and water —that out of these all 
things proceeded, and that all things were but the various ming- 
lings of these four. He taught that whenever there was a ming¬ 
ling of different elements, love was elicited; that love, therefore, 
was the formative power, hate, the destructive. He says, “All 
the members of God war together, one after the other.” He 
held that hate was a power operating solely within the province 
of the world, and that it in no wise disturbed the blest abode of 
the gods; that inasmuch as man is a perverted god, doomed to 
wander on this gloomy globe, so may hate be only perverted 
love, having only power over the smaller portion of existence — 
over that part which, disconnecting itself from the whole, con¬ 
taminates itself with crime, and thereby involves the errors of 
mortals. 

The doctrines of Empedocles were of great importance in the 
evolution of ancient thought. They embraced the deepest prob¬ 
lems of philosophy that can occupy the intellect of man. The 
teachings and the career of this ancient thinker, and his majestic 
struggle with the mysteries of philosophy, have served to furnish 
another curious and instructive page of human history. And it 
matters not what discrepancies may be regarding his private 
life, or the manner of his death; whether he was drawn up to 
heaven in a chariot of celestial light, or was calcined in ^Etna’s 
hot crater, or whether, as is probable, he tranquilly closed his 
long and honored career in Greece; Empedocles, as the exponent 
of a philosophy that has survived the ruins of the years, stands 
out from the dim past as one of the mile-stones along the high¬ 
way of progress. 


150 


ANAXAGORAS. 


ANAXAGORAS. 


“The political importance of Greece, and of Athens, the 
Queen of Greece, was growing to a climax. The countless hosts 
of Persia had been scattered by a handful of resolute men. The 
age of Pericles, one of the most glorious in the long annals of 
mankind, was dawning. The poems of Homer formed the sub¬ 
ject of literary conversation, and of silent enjoyment. The 
early triumphs of JEschylus had created a drama, such as still 
remains the wonder and delight of scholars and critics. The 
young Sophocles, that perfect flower of antique art, was then in 
his bloom, meditating on that drama which he was hereafter to 
bring to perfection in the Antigone and the CEdipus Rex. The 
Ionian philosophy had found a home at Athens.” 

In this great and stirring epoch, the palmiest period of the 
career of Greece, Anaxagoras appeared. He shared the time 
with Parmenides and Protagoras. He is said to have been born 
at Clazomense in Lydia, about 500 B. C. At an early period of 
his life he became engrossed with the passion for philosophy. 
He came into possession of a splendid patrimony by inheritance 
from his family, but wholly yielding himself to the fascinations 
of philosophy, he gave up all care for his affairs. He disre¬ 
garded his estates and suffered them to run to waste, w T hile he 
was solving the mysteries of the Universe. He placed his ambi¬ 
tion elsewhere, declaring that the sole aim and purpose of his 
life Avas to contemplate the heavens. But one day he found him¬ 
self a beggar. Then he declared: “ To philosophy and my own 
wordly ruin, and my soul’s prosperity.” He went to Athens and 
opened a school. Euripides, Socrates, and Pericles were among 
his pupils. He had previously visited Egypt. Among his disci¬ 
ples were some of the most illustrious men of those times. At 
last he paid the penalty for being wiser than his contemporaries. 
An accusation of impiety was brought against him. He was 
accused of not believing in the gods, and was condemned to 
die: to which he answered very quietly: “That sentence was 


151 



ANAXAGORAS. 

passed upon me before I was born.” In every clime and every 
century, an ignorant public has demanded the instant punish¬ 
ment of those holding opinions obnoxious to the national faith. 
In popular estimation Infidelity has ever been considered syn¬ 
onymous with treason. Thus Euripides had to clear himself 
from the charge of heresy, JEschylus was condemned to be stoned 
to death for blasphemy, Socrates had to drink the fatal hem¬ 
lock, and Anaxagoras was tried and sentenced to death. Through 
the powerful influence of Pericles, his friend and pupil, the sen¬ 
tence was mitigated to banishment. He was exiled to Lampsacus, 
where he tranquilly passed the remainder of his life. “It is not 
I who have lost the Athenians; it is the Athenians who have 
lost me,” he proudly exclaimed. He still prosecuted his philo¬ 
sophical researches. The citizens cherished great respect and 
affection for the good old man. When he was upon his death¬ 
bed, they asked him in what way they might esteem his mem¬ 
ory. He answered that he wished the day of his death annually 
kept as a holiday in all the schools of Lampsacus. For centu¬ 
ries his last wishes were observed. Upon the tomb erected to 
him in the city were inscribed these words: * 

“ This tomb great Anaxagoras confines, 

Whose mind explored the heavenly paths of Truth.” 

Anaxagoras thus announced the fundamental principle of his 
philosophy; “Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins 
or ceases to be; for nothing comes into being or is destroyed; 
but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-existent things; so 
that all-becoming might more correctly be called becoming- 
mixed, and all corruption becoming separate.” The idea here 
expressed is, that instead of there being a creation, there was 
only an arrangement; instead of one element, there were an 
infinite number. He held that nothing can proceed from noth¬ 
ing, and hence that all things can be only an arrangement of 
^existing things. He thought the eternity of matter, the unchange- 
ability of the Universe as a whole, and all the variety of forms 
were produced by new arrangements of its constituent parts. 
The first moving force which arranged the parts of things out 
of chaos he called “Intellect.” He utterly rejected Fate, as 
•an empty name. Imputing everything to Reason, he discarded 


152 


ANAXAGORAS. 


Chance. These two powers occupied a very important place in. 
the earlier philosophy. Disclaiming these, Anaxagoras pro¬ 
claimed Intelligence to be the Arranging Power of the Universe. 
The prime mover of the elements was Reason. He believed in 
many elements instead of a single one. Unlike Thales and Par¬ 
menides, who proclaimed the 111 to be the One, he declared the 
All to be the Many. He held that Intelligence is infinite, and 
that by it all things were arranged. He, however, supposed a. 
subordinate arrangement of elements which were carried on by 
themselves. Whatever he was unable to explain he attributed 
to Intelligence. Thus the Christian, in later ages, explains what 
he can by natural causes; whatever he cannot comprehend he- 
attributes to his God. Says that delightful writer, G. H. Lewes i 
“The Christian thinkers some ceniuries back believed that the, 
Deity created and ordained all things, nevertheless when a man. 
burnt his finger, the cause of the burn he attributed to fire, and: 
not to God; but when the thunder muttered in the sky he, 
attributed that to no cause but God.” Anaxagoras occupied the 
highest rank in the pre-Socratic epoch. Notwithstanding the 
persecution he was Subjected to by his vainglorious countrymen,, 
after his death they conferred the highest honor upon his 
memory. They boasted that he possessed the power of fortel- 
ling future events, and awarded him the credit of having first 
explained the phases of the moon and the nature of eclipses. 
The Athenian populace that had driven him into exile finally 
rendered full justice to the name of Anaxagoras. 

“To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored, 

So round and round we run, 

And ever the truth comes uppermost. 

And ever is justice done.” 


PERICLES. 


158 


PERICLES. 

This illustrious Athenian orator and statesman was a son of 
Xanthippus, who defeated the Persians at Mycale. His mother, 
Agariste, was a niece of Clisthenes, the great statesman who 
made important changes in the Consti ution, tending to increase 
the power of the Commons, and thus becoming very popular in 
his day. 

Pericles studied various arts and sciences under Damon the 
musician, Zeno of Elea, and Anaxagoras. Plutarch says it was 
the latter philosopher who gave him that force and sublimity of 
sentiment superior to the demagogues — who formed him to that 
admirable dignity of manners which was peculiarly his. Eor 
some years after he had arrived at manhood he kept himself 
aloof from public affairs. There can be little doubt that it was, 
during this time he laid the foundation of his brilliant and vir¬ 
tuous public career. About 470 B. C. he came out as the leader, 
of the democratic party. But he by no means believed in a 
vulgar and unphilosophical “dead-level,” whether in political or 
social life. Conscious of his genius, he never allowed himself to 
become “cheap” in the eyes of the people, and mostly reserved 
himself for great occasions. 

He had a graceful figure, a sweet voice, and complete self-com¬ 
mand. “Adorning his orations with the rich colors of philoso¬ 
phy,” says Plutarch, “adding the loftiness of imagination and 
all-commanding energy with which philosophy supplied him, to 
his native powers of genius, and using whatever he found to his- 
purpose in the study of Nature, he far excelled all other orators.” 

The Areopagus, which at first was a court of real justice and 
equity, had latterly become a dangerous engine of the aristoc¬ 
racy. He therefore deprived it of the judicial power which it 
had so abused. He also enjoined that theatrical amusements for 
the people should be provided at the public expense. And these 
amusements were then, be it remembered, of a high character, 
and far more influential in forming and sustaining virtuous and 


154 


PERICLES. 


esthetic habits than the church exhibitions of to-day, which are*, 
too expensive for all but the rich and well-to-do to attend, 
except at the cost of self-respect. The aristocratic party hav¬ 
ing at last become unbearable, Pericles used his influence to 
procure the ostracism of its leader, Cimon, who was, exiled (461) 
for ten years, but was recalled in 456, with the concurrence of 
Pericles. But this five years’ virtual exile did its work. The 
aristocrats (and they were not true aristocrats either, but mostly 
self-styled) were partially routed, and the right men had oppor¬ 
tunity to emerge from their enforced privacy, and, in large or 
circumscribed capacities, help the people to right government. 
But it was not until the ostracism of Thucydides, (the politician 
— not the historian) as leader of the same party, in 444, that 
the rout of the conservative party became complete. 

Pericles displayed magnificent courage at the battle of Tan- 
agra, in 457, and magnanimously proposed the decree that 
Cimon should be recalled from exile. After the death of Cimon 
and the ostracism of Thucydides, Pericles directed the govern¬ 
ment with undisputed supremacy. “ He became sole master of 
Athens,” says Plutarch; “he kept the public good in his eye, 
and pursued the strait path of honor.” He commanded in 
the Samian war, which ended in the conquest of Samos in 440 
and extended the influence of Athens by planting colonies at 
Chalcis, Sinope and other places. He expended the public 
money profusely, but wisely, in the erection of magnificent 
buildings and monuments, which have never been equalled as 
models of art and taste. Under his auspices the Parthenon was 
built and was adorned with the sculptures of Phidias. The age 
of Pericles was the most brilliant period of Grecian art and 
dramatic literature, just as the subsequent Augustan and Eliza¬ 
bethan ages were the classic periods of Roman and English 
genius. Pericles silenced those who murmured at his extrava¬ 
gance in building, by an offer to pay the expense out of his own 
purse on condition that his name alone should be inscribed on 
the new edifices. 

But it was not only the internal policy of Pericles that was 
far-sighted. His foreign policy also conduced (o the substantial 
glory of Athens. Por instance, he constantly opposed the 
ambitious schemes of foreign conquest which the Athenians 


PERICLES. 


155 


were prone to entertain. On the other hand, he took effectual 
measures to render the maritime power of Athens superior to 
that of any other state. He continued on a gigantic scale the 
plans of Themistocles, by connecting Athens with the sea, thus 
protecting it from the attack of an army by land. This 
excited great alarm among the Spartans and their allies. And 
seeing that under his administration Athens had become an 
imperial state, with an extensive list of allies, partly free and 
partly tributary, in fact, having attained the maximum of her 
power, no wonder the jealous Spartans organized a league to 
subvert this power, which league involved all Greece in the great 
Peloponnes'an war, which began in 431. At the end of the first 
campaign, Pericles pronounced a long and inimitable funeral 
oration on those who had fallen in battle. 

A great plague raged at Athens during the second year of the 
war. The people became so demoralized that they deprived Per¬ 
icles of command, and punished him with a fine. Eepublics are 
proverbially grateful, of course! He had recovered his influence 
but a short time when he died of the desolating pestilence, in 
the autumn of 429 B. C. 

Pericles utilized his high philosophy in consummately apply¬ 
ing it to the generous and beneficent conduct of his country’s 
affairs. “He wielded the powers of his majestic intelligence and 
the stores of his spacious imagination with consummate ease 
and mastery.” He was a working philosopher on a magnificent 
scale. He displayed great personal courage as a military com¬ 
mander; but “he rarely courted destruction, and was princi¬ 
pally famous for his care of the lives of the citizens.” His 
private habits were retired — almost recluse, pure, and temper¬ 
ate; while the tenderest domestic attachment bound him to the 
engaging and cultivated Aspasia. In fine, many of the most 
competent critics look upon him as the model man of all the 
ages —in person, grace, oratory, art, philosophy, purity, integ¬ 
rity, high statesmanship, moral and physical courage, domestic 

attachment, and love of country. 

k 


156 


AS PAS IA, 


ASP ASIA. 


This grand Greek woman, so justly celebrated for her beauty; 
talents, home life, and political influence, was a native of 
Miletus. She removed to Athens in her youth, and gained the 
affection of Pericles, with whom she lived as his wife. For this, 
she has often been vilely and falsely called a “ courtesan.” The' 
truth is, the laws of Athens did not permit Pericles to marry a 
“ foreigner; ” that is, one not born in the State. She was* how¬ 
ever, by universal consent, esteemed as the virtual wife of the 
great statesman ; and a purer domestic attachment than obtained 
between them was never known or contemplated, in reality,, 
fable, or song. 

Indeed, Barclay says: “She was married to Pericles, but 
the laws of the city refused her, as an alien, the title of wife. 
It is true the comedians of her time, and subsequently, cast 
many aspersions on her character, but these do not appear to 
have any foundation.” 

Aspasia endeavored to raise the mental condition of her sex, 
by setting them an example in study, and by publicly teaching 
philosophy, etc. Both Pericles and Socrates were, without 
doubly indebted to her instructions for much of the wisdom that 
marked their different courses. According to Plutarch, she was 
a splendid conversationalist,, and many Athenians resorted to 
her on account of her skill in the art of speaking. It is com¬ 
monly reported that she composed part of the famous funeral 
oration which Pericles pronounced over the Athenians who fell 
in battle. The poetaster Hermippus, a very “pious” man for 
the times, once prosecuted her on the “holy” charge of “im¬ 
piety!” But, through the efforts of Pericles, she was triumph¬ 
antly acquitted. 

She survived her husband. There is a beautiful antique bust 
which bears the name of Aspasia, and is supposed to be genuine. 
Of this extraordinary woman Madame de Stael says: “Aspasia 
was considered a model of female loveliness, as Alexander of 


ASPASIA. 


157 


manly lierolsm.” If for Alexander we substitute Pericles, the 
statement will be found to be still nearer the truth. Many com¬ 
petent critics do not hesitate to place this wonderful and per¬ 
fectly-mated pair on the very summit of the pyramid of human 
development, and call them the twin culmination of the noblest 
manhood and womanhood hitherto attained by the race. 

Of each of them, living in that far-off time, the enamored 
student of the great historical incarnations of our common 
Humanity may fitly say: 

“Thy voice is on the rolling air; 

I hear thee where the waters run; 

Thou standest in the rising sun, 

And in the setting thou art fair. 

“What art thou then? I cannot guess; 

But though I seem in star and flower, 

To feel thee some diffusive power, 

I do not therefore love thee less.” 

Of Aspasia, it may well be said that she eminently possessed 

“Heart influence in discursive talk 

From household fountains never dry; 

The critic clearness of an eye 
That saw through all the muses’ walk; 

“ Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of man; 

Impassioned logic, which outran 
The hearer in its fiery course; 

“High nature amorous of the good, 

But touched with no ascetic gloom; 

And passion pure in snowy bloom 
Through all the years of April blood.” 

While of Pericles it may as truly be predicated; 

“He moved upon this earth a shape of brightness! 

Within that perfect form the masculine mind, 

Untainted by the poison clouds which rest 
On the dark world, a sacred home did find.” 


158 


DIOGENES, 


DIOGENES. 

Diogenes, the Cynic, was born at Sinope, a city of Pontus, 
414 B. C. His father was a banker possessed of immense wealth, 
who lived in the utmost splendor and extravagance. But upon 
being convicted of debasing the coin, he was reduced to the 
extremest poverty, and Diogenes was obliged to flee to Athens. 

Arriving there a poor outcast, branded with disgrace, he 
gladly embraced the philosophy of poverty, as then proclaimed 
by Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynic School. Upon making 
application to Antisthenes, he was refused admission to his. 
school. Diogones, however, so persistently pressed himself upon 
the grim old Cynic, that he at last raised his knotty staff, and 
threatened to strike him if he did not go away. Diogenes coolly 
replied: “Strike! you will not find a stick hard enough to con¬ 
quer my perseverance.” 

He was finally accepted as a pupil. From this time he com¬ 
pletely renounced all luxuries, and limited his desires to the 
barest necessities. Choosing the very coarsest diet, he ate but 
sparingly of that. He attempted to subsist on raw meat and 
unboiled vegetables, but failed. A single cloak composed his 
entire wardrobe. Upon asking his master for a shirt, he was 
told to fold his cloak in two, which he did. His only equipment 
was a huge stick and a wallet. Upon seeing a boy drinking 
water from his scooped hands, he threw away his drinking cup 
as superfluous. He slept in his celebrated Tub, or under the 
marble porticoes of the palaces. He partook of his frugal 
meals in public. He prided himself upon his poverty. Being 
necessarily poor, he resolved to be ostentatiously poor. 

In the latter part of his life he was taken captive by pirates, 
and carried to Crete, where he was exposed for sale as a slave. 
Upon being asked what he would do under these circumstances, 
his reply was: “Govern men; sell me, therefore, to one who 
needs a master.” This reply induced a wealthy Corinthian to 
become his buyer, who, on returning to Corinth, gave him his. 


DIOGENES. 


159 



liberty, and consigned the education of his children to him. He 
converted the children to Cynicism. 

It was at this time that he was visited by Alexander the 
Great. The world-conqueror found the Cynic sitting in his tub, 
basking in the sun. “I am Alexander the Great,” said he. “I 
am Diogenes the Cynic,” was the reply. Alexander asked him 
if there was anything he could do for him. “Yes, stand aside 
from between me and the sun,” answered Diogenes. Struck 
with such indifference to princely favor, the great conqueror 
exclaimed: “Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!” 

An anecdote is related of his lighting a lantern in the day time, 
and peering about the streets as if in earnest search for some¬ 
thing. Upon being asked for what he was seeking, he replied: 
“A man.” He claimed that he had never seen men: at Sparta 
he had seen children; at Athens he had found only women. 
One day he cried aloud in the street: “Approach, all men!” 
Those who approached he beat back with his club, saying: “I 
called for men; ye are excrements.” Upon being brought before 
the king one day, and being asked who he was, he replied: “A 
spy on your cupidity.” Upon one occasion he appeared unbidden 
at a splendid entertainment given by Plato, and stamping upon 
the rich carpet, said: “ Thus I trample on the pride of Plato. ’ 
To which the divine Plato replied: “With greater pride, O 
Diogenes.” 

These stories illustrate his singularity and force of character. 
His bitter, insolent characteristics obtained for him the title of 
“The Dog.” He lived till his ninetieth year. One day his 
friends found him under the portico where he was wont to sleep, 
wrapped up in his cloak. Upon pushing aside the folds of his 
cloak, they discovered that he was dead. 

The doctrines of Diogenes may be briefly stated. He main¬ 
tained that science was impossible He answered arguments 
by facts. When some one was arguing with him respecting the 
impossibility of movement, he arose and walked. Instead of 
indulging in speculation about virtue, he endeavored to lead a 
virtuous life, and inculcated the most rigid morality. It has 
been said that Socrates brought philosophy from the clouds. 
Diogenes brought it into daily practice. 


160 


ANTISTHENES. 


ANTISTHENES. 


ANTISTHENES, the founder of the Cynic school of philosophy, 
was born at Athens, of a Phrygian mother, about 400 B. C. 
There is not much that can be learned of his early life, except 
that he distinguished himself at the battle of Tanagra. After 
his military experience, he adopted the pursuit of a philosopher. 
His teacher was the famous Gorgias of the Sophist school. He 
subsequently established a school for himself; but becoming 
captivated by the superior and more practical method of Socra¬ 
tes, he ceased his own teachings, and persuaded all his pupils 
to go with him to the Athenian sage, of whom they could learn 
true wisdom. This was an exhibition of that rare and genuine 
modesty which characterized Antisthenes. 

At the time he relinquished his own school for that of Socra¬ 
tes, he was past the prime of life. He remained the disciple 
and friend of the great master till his martyrdom, after which 
he established a school of his own in the gymnasium in that 
quarter of Athens called Cynosarges — from which, according to 
some, the sect of Cynics derived its name. 

His doctrines were opposed to those of Plato, and it has been 
asserted that the two philosophers were personal enemies. The 
satirical and eccentric Diogones of Sinope, who afterwards 
became the most noted representative of Cynicism, was one of 
the pupils of Antisthenes. It is related that after Antisthenes 
had grown old. and his temper had become morose and insup¬ 
portable, Diogenes was the sole one of all his scholars who 
remained with him, or who was near him at the time of his 
death. In his last agony, Diogenes asked him whether he 
needed a friend. “Will a friend release me from this pain?” 
was the old Cynic’s only reply. Diogenes gave him a dagger, 
saying: “This will.” “I wish to be free from pain, not from 
life.” rejoined the dying master. 

The precise date of his death is not known. Of his works, 
only a few apothegms remain. He exercised considerable influ- 


AN TISTHENES. 


161 


'ence at Athens. After the condemnation of Socrates, he pro¬ 
cured Miletus to be put to death, and Anytus banished, for 
their persecution of his esteemed master. 

Antisthenes was celebrated for his temperate and simple 
ways of life, and for his contempt of worldly wealth and honors. 
It is said that he carried to an extreme his views of poverty, 
■and that he even disregarded the ordinary usages of life. To 
show how utterly he dispised the effeminacy of luxury, he 
confined himself to the coarsest and simplest diet, carried a 
;staff and wallet, allowed h's beard to grow, and made a sort of 
ostentatious display of his worn and threadbare cloak. This led 
Socrates to remark to him upon one occcasion: “I see your 
vanity, Antisthenes, peering through the holes in your cloak.” 
But it is a mistake to conclude, as some have done, that he 
made a virtue of being ragged, hungry and cold. The truth 
seems to be that he sought to inure himself to privation and 
hardship, in order that he might bear the chances of fortune 
with the fortitude of the true philosopher. He was stern in his 
manner, his doctrine was rigid, and his life was a battle against 
luxury and the pleasures of the world. His language is said to 
have corresponded with his manner and appearance, being 
harsh, reproachful, and bitter. He expressed his contempt for 
all sensual enjoyment by saying, “I would rather be mad than 
sensual.” He was a worshiper of virtue, but it was virtue rigid, 
severe and unamiable. He approved only of those healthy 
pleasures that result from correct conduct and a life of useful 
labor. Observing how little wealth and luxury can do for the 
happiness of man —how riches prompt to vice, and luxury 
•generates desires, he conceived the idea that poverty and self- 
denial were the only means for the attainment of moral purity. 

The sole aim of the Cynic was to lead a life of virtue. 
Such a life consisted in limiting desires to the simplest necessi¬ 
ties, and a complete renunciation of all luxury and sensual 
pleasures. The basis of Cynicism was a rigorous practice of 
every moral virtue. Cynics deemed a life of comfort and enjoy¬ 
ment unworthy reasonable men, and that something purer and 
more elevated should be sought. Especially did they denounce 
the manners prevailing in the gay, luxurious city of Athens. 
They despised the men and customs of their age. The well- 


162 


ANTISTHENES. 


known and uniform contempt which Antisthenes entertained 
for the mass of mankind, may be inferred from two of his 
sayings. Whenever asked what was the peculiar advantage to 
be derived from philosophy, he answered r ‘‘It enables me 
to keep company with myself.” Being told how he was 
admired by many, he asked: “Have I done anything wrong 
that I am praised?” 

And thus lived Antisthenes — poor, unsympathizing, stern, 
abstemious —a life rigorously correct and virtuous. With him 
existence was a subjugation of all sensuous desires — a victory 
over human nature. His teachings were strictly personal and 
practical. Instead of speculations about temperance, morality, 
and virtue, he taught men to exemplify them by their conduct. 
To lead the life of a Cynic required noble qualities and great 
force of character — complete self-denial and mastery over the 
lower nature. And these qualities are as rare in the world to¬ 
day as they were in the age of those ancient worthies. Antis¬ 
thenes was a reformer among the great teachers of his time. 
His aim was to abolish the effeminacy of that period, to 
inspire mankind with higher and purer motives of action, to 
teach them a proper and studied subjugation of all the ordi¬ 
nary desires, passions, and propensities, and to exemplify in his 
own person a life of virtue, temperance and wisdom. 


163 



XENOCRATES. 


XENOCRATES. 


This eminent Greek was born at Chalcedon, 396 B. C.. He 
became very early a pupil of Plato, and a fellow-student of Aris¬ 
totle. He accompanied Plato to Syracuse, where he remained 
till the death of his great master. Upon the death of Plato, 
his nephew, Speusippus, succeeded him in the famous Academy 
at Athens, which place he held for eight years. During this 
period Xenocrates was deputed from Athens on embassies to 
Philip of Macedon. 

This powerful prince, apprised of the high reputation of 
Xenocrates for probity, purity, and patriotism, applied all those 
kingly arts he so well knew how to use, to insinuate himself 
into the favor of the disinterested philosopher. The crafty and 
unprincipled Philip retained a great number of spies and pen¬ 
sioners at his court and in all the neighboring countries, to 
corrupt with bribes all who were sent to negotiate with him; 
but he found the Athenian ambassador inaccessible to his feasts, 
caresses and liberalities. He then sought to overcome him by 
contempt, ill-treatment, and intimidation. But the Macedonian 
monarch who had boasted that he was master of any city into 
which he could introduce an ass laden with gold, found the 
Athenian ambassador incorruptible, and his firm and unaltera¬ 
ble integrity proof against all his bribes and flatteries and 
threats. He was therefore rigidly excluded from the confer¬ 
ences with his associate ambassadors who had been already 
subsidized by the corrupt court. He was not permitted to 
appear either at audiences or feasts with his colleagues. They, 
upon their return to Athens, colluded to discredit him with the 
people, complaining that he had been of no use to them in the 
embassy. By these artful misrepresentations Xenocrates came 
near being disgraced and having a fine imposed upon him. 
Unable to preserve silence under the unjust accusation, he 
revealed all that had passed at the court of Philip, and exposed 
the conduct of his fellow deputies who had been bought by the 


164 


XENOCRATES. 


enemy of the commonwealth. This explanation satisfied the 
people and covered his corrupt colleagues with shame .and 
confusion. 

The integrity and probity, the principles and patriotism of 
Xenocrates became proverbial. He was afterwards subjected to 
every test by Philip’s son and successor, the great Alexander. 
The ambassadors whom the conqueror had sent to Athens upon 
some important negotiations, after having exhausted every 
other resource and resorted to every other expedient to secure 
his influence, tendered him fifty thousand crowns. The treach¬ 
erous Philip had purchased cities with no greater sum. One 
of the old chroniclers concludes his account of this transaction 
with this simple statement: “The king would have purchased 
the friendship of the philosopher, and the philosopher would 
not sell it to the king.” 

It was undoubtedly his generosity and noble disinterested¬ 
ness which reduced him to poverty —for it appears that he was 
extremely poor, notwithstanding the great services he had 
rendered the Athenians. We read that he could not pay a 
certain tax which was yearly levied upon all the strangers in 
the city. Plutarch relates that one day as the farmers of the 
revenue were taking him to prison for not having paid this 
tribute, Lycurgus, the orator, discharged the debt for him, and 
took him out of the custody of the officers. Upon meeting 
the son of his deliverer some days later, Xenocrates said 
to him: “ I pay your father the favor he did me with inter¬ 
est; for all the world praises him on my account.” At 
another time he was sold by the officers because he was unable to 
pay this captation tax laid upon strangers; but he was bought 
by one Demetrius Phalereus, and immediately set at liberty. 
It seems surprising that the Athenians would permit a philos¬ 
opher of the reputation of Xenocrates, and one who had done 
so much for their city, to be treated with such severity and 
indignity; but it must be borne in mind that at Athens the 
law was supreme, and admitted of no leniency in its impartial 
enforcement. As an illustration of the really great regard the 
Athenians had for his probity and honor, the following inci¬ 
dent is related. One day when he appeared before the judges 
to give evidence in some affair, on his going toward the altar 


XENOCRATES. 


165 

5or rhe purpose of swearing in the usual form, all the judges 
rose up and would not permit him to do so, declaring that his 
word was as satisfactory to them as an oath. 

The nephew of Plato continued in the Academy eight years, 
and then resigned the school to Xenocrates. He took the place; 
of the great Teacher 339 B. C., and occupied it for more than 
a quarter of a century. He is represented as having been rather 
stiff and austere in his temper, and naturally of a melancholy 
manner. Plato used to reprove him, when he was his pupil, 
for his want of politeness, bidding him “ sacrifice to the Graces.’* 
But the purity of his life, and his generosity and devotion to 
principle made ample amends for the severity of his manner 
He had no regard for riches, praise, or pleasure. 

The following characteristic anecdote is related of him: Being 
once in company where the chief conversation was scandal, he 
continued mute. On being asked the reason for his silence, he 
replied: “It is because I have often repented of speaking, but 
never of holding my tongue.” He was particularly strenuous in 
inculcating maxims for the early education and discipline of 
youth. He insisted that only wise and virtuous discourses should 
fall upon the ears of the young; that such conversations would, 
in a manner, serve as faithful sentinels to protect the heart 
against the penetration of vice, and preserve their ears against 
the envenomed breath of slander. 

He composed several books on philosophy, and one at the 
request of Alexander the Great upon the method of reigning 
well. None of these are now extant. He passed the most of 
his time in secluded study and meditation. He visited scarcely 
at all, and was seldom seen in the streets. But when he did 
appear abroad the vicious and the debauched used to flee to 
avoid meeting him. Diogenes Laertius tells of an Athenian 
youth, named Polemon, notorious for dissipation and immor¬ 
ality, who, after a drunken debauch, with a wreath of flowers 
upon his head and reeling with wine, passing by the Academy, 
and unawed by the presence of the virtuous philosopher, 
dropped in and took his seat among the audience. The whole 
assembly was strangely surprised and offended at this insolence. 
But Xenocrates, without the least show of emotion or change 
of demeanor, continued his discourse, turning it upon tern- 


166 


XENOCRATES. 


perance and sobriety. He showed the shame and turpitude 
of the vice of drunkenness in such a light as to overwhelm the 
young libertine with confusion, and cause him to realize his 
shameful condition. As he listened to the impressive utter¬ 
ances of the worthy old moralist, the wreath fell from his 
head; he became serious and thoughtful, and an entire change 
ensued in his conduct. This singular discourse entirely cured 
him of his evil course; and from a dissolute debauchee he 
became a good and respected philosopher, and ever afterwards 
led a wise and regular life. 

Xenocrates had numerous disciples, many of whom became 
eminent. He lived a long, useful, and irreproachable life, and 
died in peace at the age of eighty-two, B. C. 316. He was not 
a great religious teacher, like Confucius or Zoroaster, nor the 
famous founder of any school of philosophy, like Pythagoras, 
Parmenides, Plato or Pyrrho,— he was simply a man of honor 
and integrity, and probity and principle — a good, pure, and 
noble man. And yet he lived far back in the ancient ages, 
and was what Christians are pleased to term a pagan. He 
lived long ere the name of Jesus Christ was heard in the 
world. He knew nothing of the triune God of Christianity. 
But he believed in gods —in a number of them. He spoke 
of them thus: “ There are eight gods. The planets are five of 
them, and all of the fixed stars together so many scattered 
members of the same body, make but one. The sun is the 
seventh; and last of all, the moon the eighth.” But although 
he held to eight gods instead of three, and these were planetary 
gods instead of imaginary, no name in the annals of Chris¬ 
tianity is associated with more noble and estimable qualities, 
or one more worthy the respect of posterity than that of 
Xenocrates of Chalcedon. And thus it is, that centuries and 
centuries before the advent of the founder of Christianity, the 

best and truest, and grandest men that ever blest mankind_ 

men consecrated to right and justice and the weal of the 
world —lived pure and spotless, and beautiful and disinterested 
lives; and “sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust,” 
each “ went tranquilly down into the pale realms of shade,” 
“like one who wraps the drapery of his coucn about him, and 
lies down to pleasant dreams.” 


167 



ARISTOTLE. 


ARISTOTLE. 

On the western side of the Strymonic Gulf, in ancient Thrace, 
just where the line of coast takes a southerly direction, once 
stood the old town of Stagira. A promontory ran out toward 
the east, which effectually screened the town and its little harbor 
from the violence of squalls coming up the iEgean. Says Blakes- 
ley in his “Life of Aristotle:” “In the terraced windings, by 
which the visitor climbs through the orange groves of Sorento, 
he may, without any great violence, imagine the narrow and 
steep paths by which an ancient historian describes those who 
crossed the mountains out of Macedonia, as descending into the 
valley of Arethusa., where was seen the tomb of Euripides and 
the town of Stagira.” Here, 384 years B. C., was born one of 
the most illustrious of those wonderful men whose fame still 
sheds a halo round the ruins of ancient Athens. His father was 
an eminent writer on subjects of natural history; his profession 
being a physician. Dying while his son was yet young, he left 
him in possession of not only his large fortune, but also of his 
own cultured tastes. Aristotle found his way to Athens, and 
appeared in that active city at the time when Plato was leaving 
for his three years’ journey into Sicily. He was then a rest¬ 
less youth of seventeen, rich in money and in learning, truth- 
loving, and insatiable in his thirst for knowledge. He had been 
lured from the home of his boyhood by the tidings of the illus¬ 
trious thinkers and crowded schools of Athens. During Plato’s 
absence, Aristotle prepared himself to be a worthy pupil. His 
ample wealth enabled him to purchase books, (costly luxuries 
in those days,) from which he eagerly gleaned the speculations 
of the early thinkers. When Plato returned, and his school 
was opened, Aristotle joined the crowd of his disciples. The 
penetrating eye of the master quickly detected the promise of 
greatness in the immortal pupil. He afterwards observed: 
“Aristotle is the mind of my school.” The impetuous youth 
remained at this school under the needed curb of his divine 


168 


ARISTOTLE. 


master for nearly twenty years. During this period he spent 
the most of his patrimony, and at last was obliged to support 
himself by the trade of a druggist. 

But the great pupil could not always be a blind follower of 
the great master. Differences, it is said, finally arose between 
them; and in a fortunate moment, Philip of Macedon appointed 
Aristotle precei>tor to his son Alexander. This was an event of 
the utmost importance in the intellectual history of Europe. It 
was owing to the friendship of the world’s conqueror, and the 
munificent assistance rendered by him during his Asiatic expedi¬ 
tion, especially in the collection of natural curiosities, which 
were selected from the captured provinces, that Aristotle was 
enabled to gather the materials for his “ History of Animals.” 
— a work which gave to his name that singular prestige which 
made it authoritative for more than fifteen centuries. 

He eventually returned to Athens and opened a school at 
the Lyceum — a school which eclipsed in numbers and impor¬ 
tance any the world had ever known. By reason, probably, of 
his restless temperament, he was in the habit of delivering liis 
lectures while walking up and down the shady paths of the- 
Lyceum, attended by his eager followers. Hence his disciples 
were called the “walking philosophers ”— Peripatetics. But 
some will have it that it was his delicate health, and his wish 
to economize time, which induced him to lecture while walking 
to and fro along the pleasant places of the Lyceum. 

He spent a long, laborious life in the pursuit and propaga¬ 
tion of knowledge. Only about a fourth of the almost incredi¬ 
ble number of works which he wrote are extant. These works 
have exercised an incalculable influence on European culture. 
They are thus mentioned by Blakesley: “Translated in the 
fifth century of the Christian era into the Syriac language by 
the Nestorians who fled into Persia, and from Syriac into Arabic 
four hundred years later, his writings furnished the Moham¬ 
medan conquerors of the East with a germ of science which, 
but for the effect of their religious and political institutions, 
might have shot up into as tall a tree as it did produce in the 
West ; while his logical works, m the Latin translation which 
Boethius, ‘the last of the Homans,’ bequeathed as a legacy to 
posterity, formed the basis of that extraordinary phenomenon» 


AK1 STOT LE. 


ICO 1 

the philosophy of the school-men. An empire like this, extend¬ 
ing over nearly twenty centuries of time, sometimes more, 
sometimes less despotically, but always with great force, recog¬ 
nized in Bagdad and in Cordova, in Egypt and in Britain, and 
leaving abundant traces of itself in the language and modes of 
thought of every European nation, is assuredly without a 
parallel.” 

Aristotle studiously sought, both in books and nature, for 
the materials wherewith to build a doctrine. His great learn¬ 
ing embraced all the speculative philosophy of Greece. It has. 
been remarked that whoso knows Plato and Aristotle, knows 
all that antiquity had to teach. The fundamental difference 
between these great thinkers appears to have been, that Plato 
was an Idealist, Aristotle a Materialist. Matter, with the latter, 
is the first principle of everything —the subject of everything 
— indifferent to everything. Eorm is essential to its becoming 
any certain thing. Matter may, indifferently, become a rose or 
an apple; but, while it is an apple or a rose, it is deprived of 
all that would make it silver or lead. Matter may become 
whatever you will—fire, earth, water, vapor, metal, mineral 
animal, tree, flower, Aristotle. But Aristotle’s system of 
physical science must necessarily have been defective, since 
philosophy is a mine which cannot be explored without the 
help of instruments, which were unknown to the ancients. 
Successful experiments were not made until the time of Galileo. 

The most valuable of all his works, and one of the very best 
books of antiquity, was his ‘‘Treatise on Animals.” Alexander 
furnished him, not only with immense sums to prosecute his 
researches, but sent him elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, lions, 
crocodiles, gazelles, eagles, ostriches, with all the other rare 
an mals of Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

Aristo le, as we have already said, was a Materialist. He 
expressly maintains that the world is eternal. But, nevertheless, 
he admitted a God—a first mover —and defined him to be ‘‘one, 
eternal, immovable, indivisible, without qualities.” Notwith¬ 
standing this, he was accused of Atheism by a priest; and not. 
being powerful enough to punish his accuser, he retired to 
Chalcis. He regarded the world as emanating from God, as the 
light emanates from the sun and is co-existent with it. God, as 


170 


ARISTOTLE. 


the absolute unmoved substance* is Thought. The Universe is 
a thought in the mind of God; it is God passing into activity, 
but not exhausted in the act. Existence, then, is Thought — it 
is the activity of the Divine Reason. In man this thought com¬ 
pletes itself, so as to become self-conscious. As there has been 
implanted in every human breast the knowledge of good with 
some inclination to evil, there can be but one system of moral- 
ity. The moral systems of Confucius and Zoroaster, of Pythag¬ 
oras and Aristotle, and Jesus, are essentially the same. The 

morals of Aristotle were equally as good as either of the others. 

/ 

He enumerates all the virtues, and does not fail to place friend¬ 
ship among them. 

Notwithstanding Aristotle’s vast learning, his singular acute¬ 
ness, and the wide range of his investigations, he had not suf¬ 
ficient scientific knowledge, nor the necessary data (indeed 
there was not sufficient knowledge at that time in the world), 
to build up such a vast system as he essayed to erect. He 
expounded the true principles of science, but failed to apply 
them, merely for the want of materials. The most of his views, 
especially his view of the connected chains of organic forms 
from the lowest to the highest, are grand. 

The astonishing number and excellence of his works have 
elicited the admiration of the intellectual world for more than 
twenty centuries. The following, from Maurice’s Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy, may not be out of place in conclud¬ 
ing this brief sketch: “A student passing from the works of 
Plato to those of Aristotle, is struck first of all with the entire 
absence of that dramatic form and that dramatic feeling with 
which he has been familiar. The living human beings with 
whom he has conversed have passed away. Protagoras, and 
Prodicus, and Hippias, are no longer lounging upon their 
couches in the midst of admiring pupils; we have no walks 
along the walls of the city; no reading beside Ilissus; no 
lively symposia, giving occasion to high discourse about love; 
no Critias recalling the stories he had heard in the days of 
his ycuth, before he became a tyrant of ancient and glorious 
republics; above all no Socrates forming a center of these 
various groups, while yet he stands out clear and distinct in 
his individual character, showing that the most subtle of 


ARISTOTLE. 


171 


dialecticians may be the most thoroughly humorous and 
humane of men. Some little sorrow for the loss of those clear 
and beautiful pictures will perhaps be felt by every one, but 
by far the greater portion of readers will believe that they have 
an ample compensation in the precision and philosophical 
dignity of Aristotle’s treatises, for the loss of the richness and 
variety of Plato’s dialogues. To hear solemn disquisitions 
solemnly treated; to hear opinions calmly discussed without 
the interruptions of personalities; above all, to have a profound 
and considerate judge, able and not unwilling to pronounce a 
positive decision upon the evidence before him;—this they think 
a great advantage; and this, and far more than this they expect 
and not wrongly, to find in Aristotle.” 

In the history of Christianity there is no example of any 
other philosophers having exerted so great, so permanent but 
withal so perverted an influence on the Christian intellect as 
Plato and Aristotle, especially the latter. This perversion cer¬ 
tainly should not have existed; and we may rest assured that 
it was as far as possible from the honest intention of both 
these great luminaries that their genius should cast so bale¬ 
ful a light over any class or sect of men. For nearly two 
thousand years Aristotle’s authority was not only predominant 
but almost despotic, wherever the light of his genius penetrated, 
whether in Europe, Northern Africa, or Western Asia, down, 
at least to the time of Bacon. He was the honest founder of 
that system of logic which, with its premises well founded, has 
'ever led to clear and truthful results; but, with its premises 
dishonestly manufactured or superstitiously accepted, so effic¬ 
iently served the pu pose of Chiristian dogmatists and creed- 
makers in every age, who, with any assumed premises they 
desired, in relation to man, God, earth, heaven, or hell, could, 
and too often, alas! did, in strict accordance with Aristotle’s 
syllogism, “reason out”(?) to legitimate conclusions the most 
stupendous “articles of belief,” which were, in thousands of 
horrible instances, all along the centuries, enforced or attempted 
to be enforced on unbelieving persons and communities by 
ostracism and proscription, by fire and sword, by rack and 
crucifixion, and by hundreds of other forms of cruel deaths. 


172 


PYRRHO. 


PYRRHO. 

“Pyrrhonist — a skeptic; one who doubts of everything. — Pyr¬ 
rhonism — skepticism; universal doubt. * ’ — Webster. 

For more than twenty centuries the name of Pyrrho has 
been synonymous with absolute and unlimited Infidelity. This 
celebrated philosopher was born at Elis, in the fourth century 
before Christ, and was one of the founders of the skeptical 
school of philosophy. After studying under Anaxagoras, he 
followed in the curious train which accompanied the expedi¬ 
tion of Alexander into India. There he became connected 
with the Gymnosophists, and also acquired a knowledge of the 
doctrines of the Persian Magi. It is quite likely that the spec¬ 
tacle of a vast body of sage and studious men devoted to 
doctrines so strange to him, may have first led him to investi¬ 
gate the nature of belief. The philosophy of Democritus had 
sown the seeds of doubt in his mind, and led him to question 
the origin of knowledge. At last this doubt became irresist¬ 
ible. He returned to Greece, and founded at Elis the school 
of Skeptical Philosophy. 

Like Socrates, Pyrrho rejected all speculative doctrines, 
and inculcated practical morality. He became remarkable for 
the simplicity of his life. Resigned and tranquil amid all 
its vicissitudes, he accepted the world as he found it, and 
ever guided himself by the general precepts of justice and 
common sense. Everything like metaphysical speculation he 
rejected with disgust. His eagerness for truth was unbounded. 
He declared that he knew nothing. Dissatisfied with all the 
attempts of his predecessors to read the great riddle of exist¬ 
ence, he reprobated all philosophy, and became actuated by an 
active, insatiable spirit of investigation. His was the Doctrine 
of Doubt. 

The Skeptical School was founded upon the assertion that 
there is no criterion of Truth. The same object appears differ- 


PYRRHO. 


173 


ently to man in different positions and at different times; 
therefore, he can never know whether things are in accordance 
or discordance with their appearance — can never ascertain the 
true among phenomena. Objects appear differently to different 
individuals. Among such appearances how can man hope to 
select the true one; or if he make a selection, how can he be 
absolutely certain that he is right ? Phenomena are the 
appearances of things. But where is the criterion of the truth 
of these appearances? If any of these appearances be in exact 
accordance with the things of which they are an appearance, 
which are they , and how do we know which are true? The 
properties which we impute to things, such as color, taste, 
hardness, and so forth, depend wholly upon our senses; but 
we know our senses are deceptive, and are continually giving 
us contradictory indications. An apple, for illustration, pre¬ 
sents five different appearances to a person; he feels it, sees 
it, smells it, tastes it, and hears it bitten; he perceives it under 
five different aspects. Had he three more senses, the apple 
would have three more qualities; if he had three senses less, 
the apple would have three qualities less. Now, do these quali¬ 
ties depend upon his senses? or do they really appertain to 
the apple? The difference of the impressions the apple pro¬ 
duces on different people, proves that its qualities are depend¬ 
ent upon the senses. Things do not present one uniform series 
of appearances. All that can be claimed is, that things present 
such and such an appearance to our senses. Thus the apple 
may be brilliant, round, and sweet to our senses, while to a 
person with more or less acute vision, scent and taste, it may 
be rugged, dull, and tasteless. 

Philosophers assert that it is the province of reason to dis¬ 
tinguish the true from the false amidst this conflict of sensu¬ 
ous impressions. Plato, Aristotle, and nearly all the ancient 
Sa yes, assert that Reason is the criterion of Truth. But, asks 
the skeptic, what proof is there that this criterion is correct? 
What proof is there that Reason never errs, or that it is ever 
correct? Is no: some criterion needed for Beason? And would 
not such a criterion, even if it existed, require in its turn some 
higher criterion? And so on forever. 

Pyrrho contended t h t we can never know the truth of any- 


174 


PYRRHO. 


thing—that all attempts to penetrate the mystery of Being 
must be vain. The attempt can only be made on appearances. 
Truth can never be apprehended by mortal man. The skeptics 
said: “We assert nothing; no, not even that we assert noth¬ 
ing.” And if there be no possibility of obtaining a certitude 
of knowledge, what is the use of man troubling himself about 
the matter? 

Pyrrho taught man to reconcile himself to life as it comes, 
and from it extract all the pleasure possible. Epicurus already 
had advised men to do the same. All that they can do is to 
observe and classify phenomena — to trace the connection be¬ 
tween cause and effect. ‘The Skeptics sought to destroy the 
certitude of knowledge. Theirs was simply a negative doctrine. 

Pyrrho was the great Grecian iconoclast, who, with his piti¬ 
less logic, smote the pretended philosophy of his predecessors. 
He undermined the gigantic edifice of ancient dogmatism, and 
left it a hopeless heap of ruins. Pyrrho died as he had lived, 
in happiness, peace, and universal esteem. 


ZENO. 


175 


ZENO. 

The Stoics were the largest and most celebrated of the. 
ancient sects. The sect embraced many of the wisest old wor¬ 
thies of ancient Greece and Rome. Zeno, the founder, was 
born at a small city in the island of Cyprus, about 300 B. C. 
The exact date of his birth is uncertain. His father was a 
merchant, and he spent the early part of his life in the same 
vocation. After one of his voyages to Athens, his father hap¬ 
pened to bring home some works of Socrates and the philoso¬ 
phers. These Zeno eagerly seized upon and studied with profit 
and delight. 

At the age of thirty he sailed for Athens, then the great 
emporium of traffic and knowledge. Losing his valuable cargo, 
of Phenician purple by shipwreck, he willingly turned to phi¬ 
losophy for consolation. He attached himself to the sect of 
Cynics, who took a sort of pride in their poverty, making a 
public parade of it in order to captivate the minds of the mul¬ 
titude. It is related of him that he was so delighted by read¬ 
ing one of Xenophon’s books one day that he asked where 
such men were to be met with. Crates, the Cynic, that moment 
happening to be passing by the shop in which he was, was 
pointed out to him by the bookseller. Zeno followed him and 
became his disciple. But he could not long endure the osten¬ 
tatious display which the Cynics made of their poverty, nor 
their gross manners and unphilosophical speculations. And so 
he sought another master. He next became the pupil of Stilpo, 
of Megara. From this instructor he learned the art of dispu¬ 
tation, for which he subsequently became so celebrated. He 
acquired all that the Megaric school could teach. Then ho 
turned to the philosophy of Plato. He listened to its exposi¬ 
tion by Polemo and Xenocrates. In the principles of Plato he 
discovered the germ of Stoicism. 

After twenty years of laborious study and preparation in 
these several schools, he opened one himself in the Porch of the 


17G 


ZENO. 



i 


Poets at Athens; this Porch was called the Stoa, from which 
his doctrine and disciples have derived their name. He pre¬ 
sided over this school for fifty-eight years. Many of the most 
eminent men of antiquity were numbered among his pupils. 

In person, he is described as having been spare and tall, his 
forehead furrowed with thought, and his general aspect some¬ 
what severe. He was rigidly abstemious in his habits of life, 
his diet consisting of bread, figs, and honey; and though he 
jhad a weakly constitution, he lived to be nearly a hundred 
years old. In his ninety-eighth year he happened to slip and 
break his finger as he was stepping out of his school. This 
fall admonishing him of his infirmity and great age, he smote 
the ground, exclaiming: “Why am I thus importuned? Earth, 
I obey thy summons.” He arose and went and strangled him¬ 
self. He died honored and revered by the Athenians. During 
his life they entrusted to him the keys of the cita el —the 
greatest honor they could confer upon a mortal man. After 
his death they erected to his memory a statue of brass. But 
his doctrines have out-lasted brazen statues, and many states 
and splendid dynasties, offering consolation for man in the 
darkest trials and vicissitudes of life, and proving an unwaver¬ 
ing guide to the most illustrious sages, statesmen, and empe¬ 
rors of Greece and Borne. 

Zeno’s philosophy, like that of Epicurus, principally pertained 
to morals, and was connected with the daily practices of life. 
He held that the aim of man’s existence is neither wisdom nor 
enjoyment, but rather the attainment of virtue — the realiza¬ 
tion of perfect manhood. Like Socrates, he inseparably con¬ 
nected morality with philosophy. Like him, he taught that 
virtue was the knowledge of good, that vice was naught but 
ignorance and error. He was fully persuaded that if men only 
knew what is good, they would be certain to practice it. He 
sought to substitute for Plato’s more visionary speculations 
a practical system dealing directly with the morals of men. 
His grand end was to make mankind virtuous and goon. He 
sought to supplant the fanciful philosophies of his day by a 
•common sense system directed to the daily practices of life. 
Zeno was especially the expositor of morality —the champion 
of common sense. 


ZENO. 


177 


In physics, Zeno taught that matter and its properties are 
absolutely inseparable —that in fact, a property was actually 
a body; that the soul is corporeal, since nothing incorporeal 
can produce an effect: that there was essentially nothing but 
matter, which, in an active state, he assumed to be God. He 
held that God was the Reason of the world; that he was that 
moving, vital force, that life-giving soul which evolves a plant 
out of a seed; and that the visible world is the material mani¬ 
festation of him; that all tangible objects will in time be again 
re-absorbed and reunited in him. He accounted for the origin 
of the world by supposing that a portion of the vital heat of 
God became transmuted in passive matter, through which pro¬ 
cess the Universe arose. “During the present state everything 
is in a condition of uncertain mutation, decays being followed 
by reproductions, and reproductions by decays; and, as a cata¬ 
ract shows from year to year an invariable form, though the 
water composing it is perpetually changing, so the objects 
around us are nothing more than a flux of matter offering no 
permanent form. Thus the visible world is only a moment to 
the life of God, and after it has vanished away like a scroll 
that is burned, a new period shall be ushered in, and a new 
heaven and a new earth, exactly like the ancient ones, shall 
arise. Since nothing can exist without its contrary, no injus¬ 
tice unless there was justice, no cowardice unless there was 
courage, no lie unless there was truth, no* shadow unless there 
was light, so the existence of good necessitates that of evil.” 

Zeno concluded that the soul was a vital breath which per¬ 
vaded the body, and that it subsisted after death; in short, 
that it is the 1, the principle of personality, having its physio¬ 
logical seat in the heart. The great maxim of Zeno's system 
was, “Live according to Reason; * or since God, who is the 
Reason of the Universe, is supreme in Nature, “Live in har¬ 
mony with Nature. 

The stoics held that man’s nature and properties are forced 
upon him by Fate, but that it is his duty to despise all his 
propensities and passions, and to live so that he may be free, 
intelligent and virtuous. They believed that Nature, in her 
operations, never spared individuals in accomplishing her uni¬ 
versal ends; and that man, therefore, should tranquilly submit 


to all the shocks of destiny, and must train himself to rise 
above all passion and all pain. He must never relent and 
never forgive. The pleasures and the pains of the body are to 
be despised. The true Stoic must surmount his senses. He 
must become a man of marble. However much he may prize 
this beautiful life, he must not weep on quitting it. Though 
he loved the ties and treasures of the world tenderly, he must 
triumph over its ills and meet death unflinchingly. He must 
ignore humanity. In short, Stoicism was the philosophy of 
self-control. As a man, Zeno is entitled to the highest respect. 

Even the meagre records of Zeno’s life add a majesty to> 
the history of humanity. He appeared at a period when the 
world needed a new creed. He preached a doctrine men had 
never heard. He realized the noblest ideal of manhood, and 
left a spotless name to after times. He lived at a time when 
“Greek civilization was fast falling to decay. A little time, and 
Rome, the she-wolf’s nursling, would usurp the place which 
Greece had once so proudly held—the vanguard of European 
civilization. Rome, the mighty, would take from the feeble 
hands of Greece the trust she was no longer worthy to hold. 
There was a presentiment of Rome in Zeno’s breast. In him 
appeared the manly energy and stern simplicity which were to 
conquer the world; in him the deep reverence for moral worth, 
which was the glory of Rome, before, intoxicated with success, she 
sought to ape the literary and philosophical glory of old Hellas. 
Zeno the Stoic had a Roman spirit, and this is the reason why 
so many noble Romans became his disciples; he had deciphered 
the wants of their spiritual nature.” And so long as the chil¬ 
dren of men shall continue to value virtue, self-denial, and a 
blameless life, so long will the moral teachings of Zeno be 
held sacred in the world’s remembrance. 


EPICURUS. 


17 'J 


EPICURUS. 


The definition given in the dictionaries of the day, of “Epi¬ 
cureanism,” associating the word with luxury and sensuality, 
is a foul and base libel, a cowardly calumny against the mem¬ 
ory of the Athenian philosopher, whom historians now gener- 
erally characterize as a man of pure and virtuous life, and 
one who really inculcated self-denial and abstemiousness. The¬ 
ologians and religionists of later days, like the Stoics of ancient 
Greece, finding the philosophy of the Epicureans impregnable 
to their attacks, constantly and vehemently abused its founder. 
They have so condemned the Epicureans, through their very 
name, that men have grown into the belief that Epicurus was 
a kind of human hog, wallowing in the filth of appetite and 
unrestrained indulgence. A slander more silly and foul was 
never .originated by jealous Stoic, or perpetuated by prejudiced 
priest. Impartial history represents the habits of this great 
Grecian and his followers as exceedingly frugal and temperate. 
At the entrance to the pleasant garden in the neighborhood of 
Athens, where he founded his famous school and taught his 
numerous disciples, this inscription was placed: “The hospit¬ 
able keeper of this mansion, where you will find pleasure the 
highest good, will present you with barley cakes and water 
from the spring. These gardens will not provoke your appetite 
by artificial dainties, but satisfy it with natural supplies. Will 
you not then be well entertained?” And yet the illustrious 
proprietor of this garden, over the gate of which these words 
were inscribed, has been represented as a glutton and a sen¬ 
sualist. 

While the Aristotelians walked along the Lyceum, and the 
sullen Stoics occupied the Porch; while the Platonists had their 
Academic Grove, and the Cynics growled in the Cynosarges„ 
Epicurus and his followers sought happiness, tranquillity and 
truth in this delightful garden. Here in the society of pupils 
and philosophers, he passed a peaceful life of speculation. and 


180 


EPICURUS. 


enjoyment. The members of this communal school were greatly 
attached to each other. In times of scarcity, they contributed 
to each other’s support. 

The particular doctrine of Epicurus, which has been so 
grossly misrepresented, was briefly this: He held that every 
pleasure is in itself good; bilt in comparison with another, it 
may become an evil. The philosopher differs from the ordinary 
man in this —that while they both seek pleasure, the former 
knows how to forego certain enjoyments which will cause 
pain and vexation hereafter, whereas the common man seeks 
only the immediate enjoyment. The philosopher will not only 
avoid these pleasures which occasion grief, but knows how to 
endure those pains which will result from surpassing enjoy¬ 
ment. Therefore, true happiness is not the enjoyment of the 
moment, but of the whole life. We must not seek debauchery 
to-day and society to-morrow, but equal enjoyment all the year 
round. No life can be pleasant except a virtuous one; and the 
pleasures of the body, although not to be despised, are insig¬ 
nificant when compared with those of the soul. The former 
are but momentary; the latter embrace both the past and the 
future. Hence the golden rule of temperance. 

Epicurus not only inculcated moderation in enjoyment, but 
scorned all indulgence. His diet was extremely plain. He 
taught that pleasure was purer and more enduring if luxuries 
were discarded. He preferred simplicity to luxury. And yet 
the word Epicurean has been held synonymous with sensualist. 
But despite all the assaults of bitter Stoics and Christian cal¬ 
umniators, the character of this pure, if not the very purest of 
ancient philosophers, is to-day whitening upon the tablets of 
time. A more baseless, senseless slander was never conjured 
up than the charge of sensuality against this grand old Grecian, 
who, living upon little himself, taught the world that they who 
live plainly, have no fear of poverty, and are better able to 
enjoy the pleasures of life. 

Epicurus was born three hundred and forty years before 
Christ. His parents were lowly people and he was nurtured in 
poverty. According to his own statement, his philosophical 
career began as early as his thirteenth year. Upon hearing a 
verse of Hesiod wherein all things are said to come from 


EPICURUS. 


181 


Chaos, he asked, “And whence came Chaos?” He was referred 
to philosophy; and to philosophy did he apply. The writings 
of Democritus fell in his way. These were eagerly studied, as 
well as those of several others. He sought instruction from 
many masters, but all could give the thirteen-year old philoso¬ 
pher no solid conviction. He only wished the Truth. And rely¬ 
ing upon his own superior capacity, he produced a system of his 
own which justly places him among the first of the great Free¬ 
thinkers of the 4 pre-christian ages. 

So many fragments of his voluminous writings have been 
preserved that we are enabled to speak with precision of his 
particular doctrines. He regarded contentedness with a little 
as the greatest good. He held that wealth consisted not in 
having great possessions, but in having small wants; that man 
should accustom himself to live upon little, both as a preven¬ 
tive against ill fortune, and as an enhancement of rare 
enjoyments. He lived a life of celibacy. Temperate and conti¬ 
nent himself, he taught his pupils to be so likewise, both by 
precept and example. 

The sum of his doctrines concerning moral philosophy, in 
general, is this; “It is the office of reason to confine the pur¬ 
suit of pleasure within the limits of nature, in order to the 
attainment of that happy state, in which the body is free from 
every kind of pain, and the mind from all perturbation. This 
happy state can only be attained by a prudent care of the 
body, and a steady government of the mind. The desires of the 
body are to be prevented by temperance, or cured by medicine, 
or rendered tolerable by patience. Against the diseases of 
the mind, philosophy provides sufficient antidotes. The instru¬ 
ments which it employs are the virtues; the root of which, 
whence all the rest proceed, is prudence. This virtue compre¬ 
hends the whole art of living discreetly, justly, and honorably, 
and is, in fact, the same thing with wisdom. It instructs men 
to free their understandings from the clouds of prejudice; to 
exercise temperance and fortitude in the government of them¬ 
selves, and to practice justice to others. Although pleasure, 
or happiness, which is the end of living, be superior to virtue, 
which is only the means, it is every one’s interest to practice 
all the virtues; for in a happy life, pleasure can never be 


182 


EPICURUS. 


separated from virtue. Temperance is that discreet regula ion 
of the desires and passions, by which we are enabled to enjoy 
pleasures without suffering any consequent inconveniences. 
They who maintain such a constant self-command as never to 
be enticed by the prospect of present indulgence to do that 
which will be productive of evil, obtain the truest pleasure by 
declining pleasure. Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and glut¬ 
tony, is of admirable use in teaching men that nature is 
satisfied with a little, and enabling them to content themselves 
with simple and frugal fare. Such a manner of living is con¬ 
ducive to the preservation of health; renders a man alert and 
active in all the offices of life; affords him an exquisite relish 
for the occasional varieties of a plentiful board; and prepares 
him to meet every reverse of fortune without the fear of want. 
Continence is a branch of temperance which prevents the dis¬ 
eases, infamy, remorse and punishment to which those are 
exposed who indulge themselves in unlawful amours. A w’ise 
man, who puts himself under the government of reason, will 
be able to receive an injury with calmness, and to treat the 
person who committed it with lenity; for he will rank injuries 
among the casual events of life, and will prudently reflect that 
he can no more stop the natural currents of human passions 
than he can curb the stormy winds. Moderation in the pursuit 
of honors or riches is the only security against disappointment 
and vexation. A w’se man, therefore, will prefer the simplicity 
of rustic life to the magnificence of courts.” 

The foregoing is a short summary of the moral teachings of 
Epicurus, the man against whom such foul language has been 
used by those whose self-interest and prejudices prompted them 
to willfuly or ignorantly misinterpret his pure philosophy. The 
following is the gist of his Atheistical doctrines: 

“Nothing can ever spring from nothing, nor can anything 
'ever return to nothing. The Universe always existed, and will 
always remain; for there is nothing into which it can be 
changed. There is nothing in nature, nor can anything be con¬ 
ceived, besides body and space. Body is that which possesses 
the properties of bulk, figure, resistance, and gravity; it is this 
alone which can touch or be touched. Space is the region 
which is, or may be, occupied by body, and which affords it an 


EPICURUS. 


183 


opportunity of moving freely. Beside these—body and space- 
no third nature can be conceived; for such a nature must either 
have bulk or solidity, or want them; that is, it must either be 
body or space. The Universe, consisting of body and space, is 
infinite, for it has no limits. Bodies are infinite in multitude; 
space is infinite in magnitude. The Universe is to be conceived 
as immovable, since beyond it there is no place into which it 
can move; and as eternal and immutable, since it is neither 
liable to increase nor decrease — to production nor decay.” 

Upon a critical review of the teachings of Epicurus, we may 
find them imperfect and quite defective in many respects. But 
it must be borne in mind that we live two millenniums later than 
the great Athenian, and that many facts have been dragged out 
of “the circle of the unknown and unused” during the inter¬ 
vening ages. If Socrates was the first to bring philosophy down 
from the clouds, Epicurus was the first to make it the basis of 
morality. He sought to construct ethics upon a philosophical 
basis; and if he did not fully succeed it was because the basis 
was not broad enough. 

So long as man shall continue to study his nature in order 
that he may improve it; so long as he shall seek to learn the 
extent of his capacities in order to properly direct them; so 
long as the highest aim of the children of men shall be their 
own happiness, and the happiness of each other; so long will 
human hearts enshrine the teachings of Epicurus, viz.: that no 
life can be pleasant but a virtuous one, and that they should 
seek that pleasure for themselves which appears the most 
durable, and attended with the greatest pleasure to their fel¬ 
low men. 


184 


OLEANTHES. 


CLEANTHES. 

Cleanthes was a disciple of Zeno the Stoic. He was the sort 
of Plianias, and was born at Assos in Lydia, 339 B. C. He 
subsisted by performing laborious service, such as drawing 
water during the night, to enable him to pursue his studies 
during the day. Being cited before the Areopagus to declare 
how he gained his livelihood, he brought with him as witness, 
a gardener and a country woman, saying that he drew water 
for the one and kneaded dough for the other. The judges 
were about to order a present for him, but Cleanthes refused 
to accept it. 

This philosopher was for many years so poor, that he was 
obliged to write the heads of his master’s lectures on shells 
and bones for want cf money to buy writing material. But 
notwithstanding all his poverty, he persevered in the study of 
philosophy, and remained a pupil of Zeno for nineteen years. 

His natural faculties were said to be slow; but his resolution 
and perseverance enabled him to overcome every difficulty; 
and he at last became so complete a master of the Stoic sys¬ 
tem, that he was perfectly qualified to succeed Zeno in his 
school. His fellow disciples were -wont to ridicule him for his 
dullness, by calling him an ass, but he took no further notice 
of their sarcasm than by saying in his defense, if he was an 
ass, he was the better able to bear the burden of Zeno’s doc¬ 
trine. Being reproved for his timidity, he replied: “ It is to 
this quality that I am indebted for my innocence.” 

Though he was not of the school of Arcesilaus, when he 
heard him condemned for undermining by his doctrine the 
foundation of virtue, he candidly apologized for him by remark¬ 
ing* that though he might seem an enemy to virtue in his dis¬ 
courses, he showed himself her friend in his conduct. Arcesi¬ 
laus being informed of the handsome apology which Cleanthes 
had made for him, said to him: “You know how much I dis¬ 
like flattery; why will you flatter me?” “Is it then flattery,”’ 


CLEAN THES. 


185 


replied Cleanthes, “ to say of you that you say one thing and 
mean another?” Cleanthes frequently advised his pupils to 
conceive of pleasure as a deity sitting on her throne, attended 
by the virtues, who are ready on every occasion to whisper in 
her ear: “Do nothing which will occasion pain or grief to 
yourself or others.” 

A friend observing him silent in company, said: “One would 
think, Cleanthes, from your silence, that you took no pleasure 
in conversing with your friends.” Cleanthes replied: “It is 
because I know the value of this pleasure that I am silent; 
for I wish my friends to enjoy it as well as myself.” 

The reason which he assigned for the superiority of former 
philosophers over his contemporaries was, that formerly phi¬ 
losophers studied things, whereas now they only study words. 
When he was old, he still retained the full use of his faculties, 
and often said that he should always think life worth preserv¬ 
ing so long as he should be able to write and study. Long 
after his death, which occurred in his ninetieth year, the Eoman 
Senate paid respect to his memory, by ordering a statue to be 
erected in honor of him at Assos. 

He wrote many pieces, none of which have come down to 
us, except his “Hymn to Jupiter,” remarkable for elevation 
and grandeur of thought; and a few fragments. The work was 
first published by Fulvius Ussinus in 1568; then by other pub¬ 
lishers; and has been translated into several languages. Many 
have expressed themselves pleased, to find “such just sentiments 
regarding the deity from a heathen —so much poetry in a phi¬ 
losopher.’ J 


186 


THEODORUS. 


THEODORUS. 

Atheism has universally been considered a crime. Mankind 
in all ages have been jealous of their gods. The same intoler¬ 
ant, rancorous spirit of persecution actuated the Athenians in 
the ages before Christ in their treatment of all who dared to 
doubt the existence of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, as con¬ 
trolled the Christians all through the later ages in their 

punishment of heretics who could not accept their Father, Son, 

1 

and Ghost. 

For daring to assert that the sun was not conducted by Apollo, 
mounted in a chariot and four, Anaxagoras was condemned as 
an Atheist and compelled to flee. Aristotle was accused of Athe¬ 
ism by a priest, and was obliged to retire to Chalcis. Protag¬ 
oras was banished and his works were burned because he 
asserted, “ I neither know whether there are gods, nor what 
they are.” The Athenians offered a large reward to whoever 
would kill Diagoras, surnamed the Atheist, and punished the 
impiety of Socrates by giving him the poisoned hemlock. 

Prominent among the ancient Atheists who suffered martyr¬ 
dom for their want of faith, is Theodorus, the subject of this 
sketch. He denied the existence of gods without any restriction. 
He was a native of Cyrene, where he was born, 320 B. C. He 
was a pupil of Arete, the daughter of Aristippus, and after¬ 
wards became the successor of Anniceris. He belonged to the 
Cyrenaic school; but his philosophy appeared so dangerous to 
his fellow citizens, among whom he had been held in very high 
esteem, that they banished him from their city. Theodorus 
went to Athens, where he would have experienced worse treat¬ 
ment if Demetrius Phalereus had not interposed and saved him; 
for here too his doctrines soon came into disrepute, and a pub¬ 
lic accusation was brought against him of moral and religious 
indifference. 

After the fall of Phalareus, his protector, Theodorus was 
obliged to withdraw irom Athens for safety. He went to Egypt, 
where he soon gained the confidence of Ptolemaeus Soter, the 


THEODORUS. 


187 


king, who on one occasion, sent him as his ambassador to 
Lysimachus, who taunted him for having been obliged to leave 
Athens, and threatened to crucify him for his atheism. Cicero 
and Seneca admired the answer of Theodorus upon this occa¬ 
sion, which was to the effect that he did not care whether he 
should rot on the ground or in the air. 

He ever spoke freely concerning the gods, and his atheism 
drew him into trouble wherever he went. A complete under¬ 
standing of his philosophical system cannot be obtained at this 
late age; but he appears to have been one of the forerunners of 
Epicurus. His atheistical ideas were explained in a book which 
he wrote on the gods, and which earned him the opprobrious 
appellation of “The Atheist.” The following doctrines are 
especially mentioned as characterizing his views of human 
affairs: Wisdom and justice are desirable, because they procure 
us the enjoyment of pleasure: friendship, on the other hand, 
has no real existence; for in a person who is not wise, it ceases 
as soon as he ceases to feel the want of it, and a wise man is 
in want of nothing beyond himself. Patriotism is not a duty, 
because it would be absurd to make it incumbent upon a wise 
man to sacrifice himself for the ignorant, who form by far the 
majority of a state. His followers constituted one of the three 
branches into which the Cyrenaic school was divided, and were 
called Theodosians. After his return to Athens he was tried 
and condemned on a charge of atheism, and like Socrates was 
obliged to drink the poisoned cup. 

That he led a pure and correct life has never been questioned. 
Clemens Alexandrinus expresses his surprise that so virtuous a 
man as Theodorus should have been put to death because of 
his opposition to gentile polytheism. And thus perished Theo¬ 
doras the Atheist, a martyr to Grecian superstition. 


CHRYSIPPUS. 


1* 


CHRYSIPPUS. 

This eminent pupil of Cleanthes was born at Soli, in Cilicia,, 
in 280 B. C. He was the most eminent philosopher of his sect, 
except Zeno, and was regarded as an oracle by the later Stoics, 

He was noted for his skill in dialectics, and his subtlety as 
a reasoner; and he used ’to say to Cleanthes, “Teach me only 
your doctrines, and I will find the arguments to defend them.” 
There was a common saying, “that if the gods use any logic, it 
is doubtless that of Chrysippus.” He wrote on several subjects 
several hundred volumes. But of all his works nothing remains 
except a few extracts in the works of Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, 
and Aulus Gelluis. 

It is generally supposed that he had an unusual portion of 
vanity. But we are inclined to believe that he was too truthful 
to be mock-modest; and that therefore he made a habit of tell¬ 
ing the truth for or against himself, just as lie would do it for 
or against anybody else. It is said that a person asking him 
one day whom he should choose for a tutor to his son, he made 
this reply: “Choose me; for if I knew anybody more learned 
than myself, I would go and study under him.” If, after care¬ 
ful consideration, he did so believe about himself, where, in 
sober truth, is the vanity of this expression ? 

He is the reputed author of that immortal apophthegm in 
relation to slander: “It is no matter how ill they speak of me; 
I will live so that they shall not be believed.” 

His definition of God, as it is preserved by Cicero, shows that 
he did not in any way distinguish Deity from the Universe. As 
a corollary, he unhesitatingly declared God (or the Universe), 
the author of evil and vice, as well as of good and virtue. He 
was sober and temperate, and unspotted in his morals. But he 
was envied even by his own sect, undoubtedly because he was 
so illustrious — so much so that it came to be a proverb that 
“if it had not been for Chrysippus, the Porch had never been.” 

He died aged 73, B. C. 207, and had a monument erected to 
him among those of the illustrious Athenians. 


V 


CARNEADES. 


189 


CARNEADES. 

Carneades, the most illustrious of the Academicians, was 
horn at Cyrene, in Africa, 213 B. C. He is chiefly celebrated as 
the founder of what is called, in the history of philosophy, the 
Third, or New Academy. He was a pupil of Diogenes the Stoic, 
from whom he learned the ancient logic and those subtleties of 
disputation for which he became so famous. It i§ related that 
he thus frequently addressed his master in the course of debate: 
“If I have reasoned rightly, you are wrong; if not, O Diogenes, 
return me the minna I paid you for my lessons.” 

Having left Diogenes* he put himself under the tuition of 
Hegesinus, who then occupied the Academical chair. It was 
there he began to entertain those skeptical principles of phi¬ 
losophy for which the school afterwards became so famous. 
Upon the death of Hegesinus, he succeeded to his place. He 
.studied the voluminous writings of Chrysippus, one of the most 
-eminent of the Stoics. His works consisted of several hundred 
volumes upon a variety of subjects. There was a common say¬ 
ing, “that if the gods use any logic, it is doubtless that of 
-Chrysippus.” Carneades frequently remarked: “Had there not 
been a Chrysippus, I should not be what I am.” By this he 
meant that the writings of the great Stoic (albeit an antagonist) 
were of immense service to him as affording him an occasion 
for exercising his controversial subtlety, and trying the temper 
of his own metal. He felt that he owed to his powerful oppo¬ 
nent his clear conviction of the errors of Stoicism, and a clear 
conception of the doctrines of the Academy. As the declared 
eneuy of the Stoics, he applied himself with extreme ardor to 
-overcome Chrysippus and refute his works. In preparing for the 
public disputes with him, it is- sail that he had recourse to 
hellebore in order to stimulate his mind and give greater force 
to his imagination. No antagonist was able to resist his subtle 
.logic and power.ul eloquence. 

In 154 B. CL, he was sent as an ambassador from Athens to 
Home. The schoolmen of the Stoic city crowded around the 

7 


190 


CARNEADES. 


great expounder of skepticism, fascinated by his irresistible grace 
and power of persuasion. He harrangued the grim old Stoics, 
among whom were Galbarand and Cato the Censor, until their 
hard brows softened with the smile of approval. One day he 
would charm his hearers with a discourse in praise of justice; 
and the next day he would display his specious and audacious 
eloquence in refuting his former arguments, and in confounding 
the distinction of good and evil. The brilliant orator, as an 
exhibition of his wonderful force of argument, would one day 
refute all the propositions he had established the previous day. 
He pursued this method for the purpose of illustrating the unre¬ 
liability of the Sophist’s style of logic, and the incertitude of 
human knowledge. He seemed to possess the remarkable ability 
of speaking as convincingly against any given subject as in sup¬ 
port of it. The conscientious Cato apprehended danger from, 
such ingenious eloquence to the Roman youth. In order to 
shield them from the influence of such specious reasoning, he 
persuaded the Senate to take prompt measures to send back the 
philosopher to his own country. Thus dismissed from the 
Eternal City, he returned to Athens to renew his contest with 
his old antagonists, the Stoics. There he continued to teach 
with great applause the remainder of his life. He lived to the 
advanced age of ninety, and died 123 B. C. 

He taught the most admirable maxims of morality. We 
challenge Christendom to produce a precept equal to the follow¬ 
ing from this old pagan philosopher: “ If a person knew that 
an enemy, or another whose death would be for his advantage, 
would come to sit down upon the grass where an asp was lurk¬ 
ing, it would be acting dishonestly not to give him notice of it, 
even though his silence might pass with impunity.” It is 
related of him that he was so laborious, and so avaricious of 
his time, that he took no care either to pare his nails or cut his 
hair. So devoted was he to meditation, that he not only avoided, 
visitors and feasts, but frequently forgot to eat at his own table,, 
his servant sometimes finding it necessary to put food into his> 
hand and even into his mouth. 

He made Ethics his principal study, though he did not 
entirely neglect Physics. He was an utter skeptic. He pro¬ 
claimed all human knowledge deceptive, and skepticism the 


C ARNE AD ES. 


191 


final result of inquiry. He strenuously maintained that percep¬ 
tion was nothing save a modification of the soul, and hence 
could never reveal the real nature of external things; that man 
cannot transcend the sphere of his own consciousness, cannot 
know causes; and that all his boasted knowledge is but a 
knowledge of phenomena. In brief, all we know is our sensa¬ 
tions; and therefore we can never ascertain the truth respect ng 
objects of which these sensations are but inaccurate copies. He 
concluded that, inasmuch as there was no correspondence 
between the real object and the sensation, the world per se in 
no wise resembled the world we saw. No single sense actually 
conveys to us a correct impression of anything. All we know 
is derived through our consciousness of what its effects are upon 
us; and as our consciousness is only a state of ourselves, we 
can never know the world as* it actually is —can never know it 
but as it simply appears to us; for all we can ever know of 
it is derived through our consciousness of what its effects are 
on us. We know nothing of existence per se beyond conscious¬ 
ness. We can only conceive of things as we know them. 
Light, color, sound, taste, and smell are all states of con¬ 
sciousness. These make the Universe what it appears to us, 
and these do not exist apart from our consciousness. If all 
animals were blind, there would be no such thing as light; 
because light to us is only an appearance —an effect of some¬ 
thing unknown upon the retina. If all animals were deaf, 
there w T ould be no such thing as sound; because sound to us is 
only a phenomenon produced by the operation of something 
unknown upon the tympanum. If men had no nervous system, 
there would be no such thing as pain — pain being but a phe¬ 
nomenon produced by the operations of the nervous system. So 
our sensations are but the investitures with which we clothe the 
world. The material Universe, apart from our consciousness, is. 
an eternal silence, an infinite darkness, an insentient solitude. 

These were some of the philosophical problems presented to- 
the world by Carneades more than twenty centuries ago. They 
have been the great unsolved riddles of the ages, and agitate 
to-day the minds of the subtlest metaphysicians. Carneades is- 
here presented as the extreme enunciator of ancient skepticism. 
The inevitable result of his teachings is skepticism. Indeed,. 


192 


CARNEADES. 


the epoch in which he lived was saturated with skepticism. 
The founding of the New Academy by Carneades constituted a 
crisis in Greek philosophy. It was the first institution which 
inculcated the uncertainty of opinion, and the incomprehensi¬ 
bility of things. Carneades declared the incapacity of sense to 
furnish material for philosophy. He destroyed all the old 
foundations upon which theories and systems had been con¬ 
structed. He cleared the ground of the accumulated errors of 
all the by-gone ages. He drove the Stoics from the strongholds 
of Philosophy, he laid in ruins the fortress of Faith, and tri¬ 
umphantly incorporated the City of Common Sense high up on 
the table lands of Truth. Ignoring all the illusions of sensuous 
;appearances, discarding the certitude of human knowledge, 
he still sought to search into the hidden es-ence of things. 
From the famous New Academv he flared his torch of reason 
over the night-enveloped fields of philosophy, and passed it on 
through the long line of Skeptics down through the after gener¬ 
ations. It has dispelled, to a great extent, the murky gloom of 
dogmatic theory and speculation that has shrouded the human 
understanding, and been a constant source of illumination to 
the dazed and struggling pilgrims of earth. All the grand old 
giants of the succeeding years who have successfully assaulted 
the citadels of Faith and Superstition, have borrowed weapons 
from the ancient armory of Carneades. From the summits of 
the nineteenth century mankind to-day are gleaning up the 
ripened sheaves of thjught from the harvest fields of the centu¬ 
ries. And there is no one to whom the world to-day is more 
indebted for its elaborate systemization of the different forms of 
thought and methods of scientific research, than Carneadi s. A 
late elegant author has said: “The first doubt was the womb 
and cradle of progress.” And as a pioneer, an explorer, in the 
great domain of doubt, as one who furrowed the rugged fields 
of investigation for those who were to follow, Carneades snoul 1 
be held in grateful remembrance by all the world’s great 
thinkers to-day. He gave a forward impulse to the whole pro¬ 
gress of truth. With his unsparing, gigantic grasp, he uprooted 
the fallacies of the ancient faiths: and truth is mightier to-day 
and will strengthen with all future time, because Carneades 
lived. 


HIPPARCHUS. 


193 


HIPPARCHUS. 

This ancient Grecian was the first astronomer on .record who 
Teally made systematic observations, and left behind him a 
■digested body of astronomical science. According to Strabo, he 
was born at Nicge, in Bithynia. Neither the year of his birth 
’nor that of his death is recorded; but it appears from his astro¬ 
nomical observations, preserved by Ptolemy, that he was alive in 
the interval from 160 —145 B. C. His observations were probably 
commenced in Bithynia and continued at Rhodes; whence he is 
called by some authors the Bithynian, and by others the Rho¬ 
dian ; while some even suppose two astronomers of the same 
name, which is certainly incorrect. 

He probably studied at Alexandria, and amongst other ser¬ 
vices to science, he discovered the precession of the equinoxes; 
calculated eclipses; determined the main period of the planets’ 
revolution; invented ihe stereographical method of projection; 
catalogued the fixed stars; and laid the foundation for a true 
:science of astronomy. He also determined the first inequality 
of the moon, the equation of the center, and all but anticipated 
Ptolemy in the discovery of the evection. To him also must be 
attributed the establishment of the theory of epicycles and 
eccentrics, a geometrical conception for the purpose of resolv¬ 
ing the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, on the prin¬ 
ciple of circular movements. In the case of the sun and moon, 
Hipparchus succeeded in the application of that theory, and 
indicated that it might be adapted to the planets. Though 
never intended as a real representation of the actual motions 
of the heavenly bodies, it maintained its ground until the era 
of Kepler and Newton, when the heliocentric doctrine, and that 
■of elliptic motions, were incontestably established. Even New¬ 
ton himself, in the thirty-fifth proposition of the third book of 
the Principia, availed himself of its aid. He also undertook to 
make a register of the stars by the method of alinations — that 
is, by indicating those which were in the same apparent straight 


194 


HIPPARCHUS. 


line. The number of stars catalogued by him was one thousand 
eight hundred and eighty. 

The most complete account of the labors of Hipparchus will 
be found in the following summary from the preface to Delam- 
bre’s “History of Ancient Astronomy:” “Let no one be sur¬ 
prised at the errors of half a degree which we attribute to Hip¬ 
parchus, seemingly with reproach. It must be remembered that 
his astrolabe was nothing but an armillary sphere, of no great, 
diameter, and with very small subdivisions of a degree, as well 
as that he had neither telescope, vernier, nor micrometer. 
What should we. do even now if deprived of these helps, and 
if we knew neither the refraction nor the true altitude of the 
pole, on which point, even at Alexandria, and with armillse of 
every sort, an error of a quarter of a degree was committed ? 
At this day we dispute about a fraction of a second; they could 
not then answer for any fraction of a degree, and might be 
wrong by a whole diameter of the sun or moon. Let us rather 
think of the essential services which he rendered to astronomy, 
of which science he is the true founder. He was the first who 
gave and demonstrated methods of solving all triangles, whether 
plane of spherical. He established the theory of the sun in 
such a manner that Ptolemy, two hundred and sixty-three 
years afterwards, found nothing to change. He showed that 
all the hypotheses of his predecessors were insufficient to explain 
che two-fold inequalities of the planets; he predicted that none 
would be successful which did not combine the two hypotheses 
Of the eccentric and epicycle. He had not the proper observa¬ 
tions, because they require more time than the duration of the 
longest life, but he made them ready for his successors. We 
owe to his catalogue the important knowledge of the retrograde 
motion of the equinoctial points. The observations of Hippar¬ 
chus, by their number and their antiquity, and in spite of the 
errors we are obliged to admit, give important confirmation to 
one of the fundamental points of astronomy. It is to him that 
we owe the first discovery of this phenomenon. He also 
invented the planisphere or the method of describing the starry 
heavens upon a plane, and of deducing the solution of prob¬ 
lems in spherical astro.nomy by a method often more exact 
and convenient than that of the globe itself. He is also the 


HIPPARCHU S. 


135 


father of real geography, through the happy idea of marking 
the position of towns in the same manner as that of the stars, 
by circles drawn through the pole perpendicularly to the equa¬ 
tor; that is, by latitudes and longitudes. His method, by 
means of eclipses, was for a long time the only one by which, 
the longitude could be determined; and it is by no means of 
the projection of which he was the author that we now make 
our maps'of the world and our best geographical maps.” 

Hipparchus was a great original thinker, a discoverer -- a 
sage and a scientist. He gave a new impetus to the intellectual 
advancement of ancient Greece. And his crude astronomical 
observations undeniably contributed more toward the world’s 
scientific progress than all the philosophical speculations of 
more ancient times. 

Among the sciences which have been learned and taught by 
the wise men of the world, none have been more effective in 
elevating the human mind than the study of astronomy. This 
science has led men to form grander conceptions of the boundr- 
less extent of the Universe, and the unlimited forces pertaining 
to matter, than all other classes of study. It must be admitted! 
that the astronomers of the world have been its most useful 
teachers, an 1 have aided greatly in enlarging human compre¬ 
hension and in augmenting the appreciation of that which is 
grand and glorious in existence. The lessons imparted by this 
study have gradually led man away from the narrow fallacies 
and cramping dogmas of theology which priestcraft has for 
thousands of years sought to fasten upon the intellect of the 
world. While the preachers of the latter have dwarfed the 
human mind, the teachers of astronomy and the other sciences 
have expanded it and given it a healthy growth. 

Hipparchus being justly regarded as the Father of Modern 
Astronomy, and one of its most faithful teachers, is worthy of 
all the honors, as a friend to the human race, which his ad¬ 
mirers freely accord him. 


196 


HILLEL. 


HILLEL. 

This celebrated Jewish rabbi, a descendant of King David, 
was born at Babylon about 110 B. C. He went to Jerusalem at 
the age of forty, where he acquired such a thorough knowledge 
of the Law, that he became master of the chief school of that 
city, and was chosen President of the Sanhedrim about 30 B. C. 
He formed a new digest of the traditionary law, from which 
the Mishna, or earliest part of the Talmud, is derived. Sham- 
mai, one of his disciples, dissented from his master, and set 
up a new college, which produced violent contests among the 
Jews, but the party of Hillel proved victorious. He lived to the 
great age of one hundred and twenty years — thus dying when 
the fabled Jesus was about ten years old. 

Hillel taught, “ Do not judge thy neighbor until thou hast 
stood in his place.” “Whosoever tries to make gain by the 
crown of learning perishes.” “Promote peace, and be a friend 
of all men.” He also distinctly taught one form of the Golden 
Buie, as we may see by the following: — “One day a heathen 
went to Shammai, the head of the rival Academy, and asked 
him, mockingly, to convert him to ‘the Law’ while he stood on 
one leg. The irate master turned him from his door. The 
heathen then went to Hillel, who received him kindly and said, 
4 Do not unto another what thou wouldst not have another do 
unto thee. This is the while law; the rest is mere comment.’” 

But this great and civilizing sentiment was not by any means 
original with Hillel. Confucius and several other sages had 
taught it long before. 

Hillel was noted for his disregard of mere ritual, ceremony, 
offering, and other public demonstrations of worship. He was 
so spiritual in his inmost nature that he actually despised the 
mere outward “letter” of worship and conduct, and on that 
very account insisted all the more on the inward “spirit” of 
religion and life. But while he thus made it his peculiar mis¬ 
sion to lift people to a high plane of conscientiousness, where 


197 


HILLEL. 

they might be able to judge for themselves and be their own 
masters in all moral circumstances and emergencies, Shammai 
preached the Law in all the exactitude of its ritual, giving 
minute casuistic directions how to comport one’s self in all cases 
that might arise. 

It has been a matter of surprise to most students, Hebrew 
and Gentile, of Rabbinical lore, why Hillel has not said a word 
about a thousand mooted questions of ceremonial and sacrifice. 
If they could once find the overshadowing reason for all this, 
they would cease their search for the minor whys and where¬ 
fores of each particular case. The key to the whole position, 
without doubt, is this: — Hillel did not believe in the utility of 
punctilious formalities in closet, family, synagogue, or temple; 
therefore he did not give any directions whatever about the 
performance of them. He kept his eye steadily on the “weigh¬ 
tier matters of the Law,” and on the beatitudes of a good life; 
and it is now a settled fact that the best sayings of the reputed 
Jesus in the “Lord’s Prayer ” and the “Sermon on the Mount,” 
are directly attributable to the teachings and influence of Hillel 
the Good. 

While on this subject it might be well to suggest to the 
general reader that many insignificant persons and myths in 
this world have been pushed into unmerited historic prominence 
through the artificial overshadowing by them of really great 
characters and magnificent fictions. If there ever was a Jesus, 
Hillel was one of his most important creators. But, sad to 
relate, in this case, as in many others, the created has, by a 
train of fortuitous circumstances, almost entirely eclipsed its 
creator. About eighteen centuries ago a Messiah was urgently 
needed, and lo! from the dust of the merest earth of Galilean 
fable, he was at once made, and Hillel’s breath of moral life 
was breathed into his nostrils, and he became a living soul. 
Had Hillel been born about a century later, it is scarcely to be 
doubted that he would have been to-day our Christ and blessed 
Savior! 


198 


PHILO JUBJ1US. 


PHILO JUILEUS. 

This Greek philosopher, born at Alexandria, lived between 
the years 41 B. C. and about 50 A. C. He belonged to an illus¬ 
trious Jewish family, of the sacerdotal caste, and. was distin¬ 
guished for learning and eloquence. He was a believer in the 
Platonic philosophy, and wrote many Platonic works on the 
Jewish religion, on the interpretation of the Pentateuch, and 
other subjects, in which he showed himself partial to figurative 
or allegorical interpretations. 

There is no doubt that Philo was endowed not only with 
great learning, but with genius also. By means of allegorical 
interpretation, he found the doctrines of Plato in the writings 
of Moses! Indeed, he finds a great many things in the Penta¬ 
teuch symbolical of the Alexandrian Logos, [the Word], who 
was “free from all sin,” and of his “Father God,” and 
“Mother Sophia ” [Wisdom] “by which everything was pro¬ 
duced.” But he plainly implies that in some cases the literal 
sense of the Hebrew Scriptures was shocking to his mind. 

He taught the existence of One Invisible God, ineffable 
and incomprehensible, from whom all Intelligence proceeded; 
diffused throughout the Universe, and active in all its parts; 
never cognizable to the sense of man, and known only through 
the medium of his Logos, by whom he created the outward 
world of visible forms. This Logos of Philo bears a striking 
similarity to the Adam Kadman of the Cabalists in Palestine. 
Both were called “The Primal Man,,’ “The Model Man,” 
“The First Born Son of God,” “The Express Image of God,” 
the “Mediator” or “Intercessor” between God and Mankind. 
This Logos contending with the Spirits of Darkness, and radia¬ 
ting Light into souls that turned toward him, resembles Persian 
doctrines. In fact, Philo’s system seems to be a mixture of 
Plato’s and Zoroaster’s, wearing Hebrew forms as a garment. 

But Philo scarcely alludes to a personal Messiah, and does 
not even intimate that the Logos would assume that character. 
This assumption was left for the unknown writer or writers of 


PHILO JUD^US. 


199 


that very late, highly variegated, and entirely untrustworthy 
document called “The Gospel according to St. John,” the 
great literary hoax of the Primitive Church. 

The morality of Philo was pure and elevated, tending to even 
the strictness of asceticism. To him God was All in All, and 
this world a mere fleeting shadow. He maintained that all true 
knowledge came directly from God to the soul, by intuition, in 
exalted states of faith, or revealed in dreams, when the mind 
was quiescent. 

His writings were extensively read by Hellenistic Jews and 
the best educated of the early Christians. The stern image of 
the Hebrew Jehovah was rendered more mild and attractive 
thus reflected through the golden mist of Neo-Platonism. 

After his death a report was circulated that he became a 
Christian, and then renounced t. at faith, on account of some 
mortifications it caused him. It was even said that in his old 
age he became an intimate friend of the “apostle” Peter. But 
it is now known that these accounts are unworthy of belief. 
He must have been about seventy years old wnen Christ died, 
and it is very doubtful whether he ever heard of him. He 
makes no allusion whatever to Christianity in any part of his 
writings. 

But, in his treatise on “The Contemplative Life,” he does 
make many allusions to Monachism, or Monkery, than which 
History could not possibly furnish a stronger demonstration 
that the monastic institution was in full reign at and before 
bis time. And not only allusions; but he also favors us with 
accurate and minute descriptions of the discipline of a religious 
community, of which he was himself a member. He says this 
sect or brotherhood had parishes, churches, bishops, priests, 
and deacons; that it observed the grand festivals which we 
know obtained afterwards among the Christians; that it pre¬ 
tended to have had apostolic founders far in the past. Philo, 
who wrote before Josephus, and gave this particular description 
of Egyptian monkery, when Jesus, if such a person had ever 
existed, was not above ten years of age, and at least fifty years 
before the existence of any Christian writing whatever, has 
never thrown out the remotest hint that he had ever heard of 
Ihe existence of Christ, Christians, or Christianity. 


200 


CICERO. 


CICERO. 

Marcus Tullius Cicero — often called Tully by English 
writers — an illustrious Roman orator, philosopher, and states¬ 
man, was born at Arpinum (now Arpino,) about seventy mi es 
south-east of Rome, on the 3rd of January, 106 B. C. He was. 
brought up from his cradle in the lap of wealth and education. 
When a youth, he composed a number of poems, which are 
lost. His disposition was genial and amiable. He learned to- 
speak Greek fluently, and was profoundly versed in Greek liter¬ 
ature and philosophy. In his sixteenth year he assumed the 
manly toga, and applied himself to the study of law under 
Murcius Scaevola the Augur, an eminent jurist and statesman. 
After serving in a campaign in the social war, and passing the 
ensuing six years in studious retirement (taking no part in the 
bloody civil war between Marius and Sylla, he attended the 
lectures of the Greek philosopher Philo, the chief of the New 
Academy, studied logic with Diodotus the Stoic, and was 
instructed in rhetoric by Apollonius Molo of Rhodes. 

Having thus laid a solid foundation for his fame by the 
severe and systematic discipline of his rare talents, he began at 
the age of twenty-five his career as a pleader in the forum, 
where he soon gained great applause by his courage and elo¬ 
quence. But his physical constitution in his youth was so 
delicate that his medical friends advised him to abandon the 
bar. He therefore devoted two years to travel, finishing his 
education by visits to the most famous philosophers, rhetori¬ 
cians, and the seats of learning and art in Greece and Asia. 
He returned as it were a new man, not only with a firm con¬ 
stitution. but with his style and fancy corrected and his voice 
and actions moderated. 

He entered upon the office of consul on the first of January, 
63 B. C., and found the republic in a very critical and perilous 
condition, distracted by pestilent laws and seditious demagogues, 
and undermined by pervading corruption and traitorous conspi¬ 
racies. The most memorable part of his administration appears. 


CICERO. 


201 


in the ability, courage, and elastic energy with which he 
detected and baffled the nefarious designs of Catiline and his 
accomplices. C tiline was a candidate for the consulship in the 
election of 63 B. C., and hired assassins to kill Cicero in the 
Campus Martius when he should come to preside at the elec¬ 
tion ; but, as the consul came guarded by armed men the plot 
failed, and Catiline was not elected. This repulse rendered him 
furious. He conspired to seize the chief power by the burning 
of the city and a general massacre of the senators and the 
friends of order. The leaders of this plot—some of whom were 
of high rank and great influence—met on the sixth of Novem¬ 
ber, and arranged the immediate execution of the same; but 
their plans were revealed to Cicero by Fulvia, the mistress of 
one of the conspirators, and when two of them went to his house 
next morning to assassinate the consul they found it well 
guarded. On the eigh'h of November, Cicero delivered in the 
senate the first of his famous orations against Catiline, who 
was present, and at the end of that grand explosion of indignant 
eloquence rose to speak; but his voice was drowned by cries of 
“Traitor!” and “Parricide!” Catiline hastily quitted Home in 
the ensuing night, to join his army in Etruria, and Cicero on 
the next day ad dressed to the assembled people his second 
oration “against Catiline.” — For his preservation of the State 
from this terrible conspiracy Cicero received honors. He was 
saluted as the father of his country by Catullus and Cato, and 
hailed as the savior of Rome by the people, the father of his 
country, and the second founder of the Republic. 

His vehemence, however, against Clodius, brought upon him 
a train of evils, which finally forced him into voluntary exile; 
but his banishment was of short duration, for the Clodian fac¬ 
tion becoming odious, and the Senate and people unanimously 
recalled him. In the quarrel between Caesar and Pompey, he 
espoused the side of the latter and followed him into Greece; 
but, after the battle of Pharsalia, returned into Italy, and 
obtained the friendship of Caesar. He now retired from the 
arena of politics, and devoted himself to the calmer elegances 
of literary pursuits, when the assassination of the dictator once 
more called him upon the political stage. He advised the 
Senate to grant a general amnesty; but when he saw Antony 


202 


C IC 


li. c: 

gaining the ascendency, he removed to Athens, to escape the 
effects of the enmity of that general. In a short time, how¬ 
ever, he returned to Rome, and seemed to enjoy the friendship 
of Octavius, who nevertheless was induced to sacrifice him Jo 
the malice of Antony. Cicero was at Tusculum when he received 
the news of his proscription by the Triumvirs —Octavius, Antony 
a id Lepidus —who had all along rendered his patriotic efforts 
unavailing. In order to escape the vengeance of his enemies, 
he set out in a litter for the sea coast, but was overtaken and 
killed by the soldiers of Antony, near his Formian villa, on the 
seventh of December, 43 B. C., in the sixty-third year of his age. 
He made little effort to escape, and met death with fortitude. 
His head and hands were carried in triumph to Antony, who 
was mean enough to place them on the rostra in the Forum, 
where Cicero had so often defended the lives, fortunes, and lib¬ 
erties of the Roman people! 

It was during the four years immediately succeeding the 
battle of Pharsalia, (August, 48 B. C.,) that Cicero produced 
most of his numerous important works on philosophy and 
rhetoric, which demonstrate his immense m e'.lectual activity 
and his vast learning, as well as the versatility of his mind. 
Space will not allow us as much as the bare mention here of 
even the titles of these works, or of his extant “Orations and 
Letters.” In philosophy he adopted the principles of the New 
Academy. He was tall, with features regular and well-formed. 
His gestures were natural and graceful, his presence manly and 
commanding. No greater master of composition and of the 
music of speech has ever appeared among men. His style 
adapted itself with ease, facility, and felicity to every class of 
subjects, and which has been the model of succeeding ages. In 
what the French call esprit — light, unexpected, and inexhaust¬ 
ible wit —he was not excelled by any among the ancients. And 
though, like most men of genius, he was somewhat vain of his 
powers, still the spotless purity of his private and public life, 
and the virtuous and graceful sentiments which thickly adorn 
all his works, (and from which it would be vain to commence 
to quote,) make ample amends for his one insignificent failing, 
and attract to him through all the ages the homage of the good 
and the cultured. 


LUCRETIUS. 


203 


LUCRETIUS. 

“On earth there is nothing great hut man — 

In man there is nothing great hut mind.” 

This illustrious Italian poet and philosopher was born in 
Eome 95 years B. C. Cicero was eleven years old at this time. 
Caesar was not born till four, nor Virgil till twenty-five years 
later. Nothing whatever is known of his family and early life. 
It is conjectured that he went to Athens in his youth and made 
himself acquainted with the Epicurean system of philosophy. 
The following very silly and unreliable story is related of him 
by that slovenly and lying Christian historian, Eusebius: “Hav¬ 
ing been driven to madness by an amatory potion, and having 
composed several books in the intervals of his insanity, which 
Cicero afterwards corrected, he died by his own hands in the 
forty-fourth year of his age.” The notorious untruthfulness of 
this Christian writer, and his obvious antipathy to Lucretius, 
entitles this contemptible story to no credit whatever. 

It is greatly to be regretted that there exists no better 
biographical history of this great poet and philosopher. The 
splendid genius of Lucretius was not recognized by the age in 
which he lived. Very few allusions are made to his writings 
by his contemporaries. Their anti-religious character probably 
prompted the primitive Christian fathers to suppress everything 
like eulogy, or a recognition of their merit. Mental slavery 
and intolerance predominated at Borne at the very beginning 
of the Christian era, and it has continued to prevail in Christen¬ 
dom through all the later centuries. Horace, Cicero, and the 
great characters of that age dared not hazard their fair fame 
by praising the peerless poetry of Lucretius; just as in the 
last two centuries no one could extol Rousseau or Voltaire, 
unless at the peril of their reputation. But if Lucretius failed 
to secure the appreciation of the ancients, he has received ample 


204 


LUCKETIUS. 


amends from the moderns. That great and gifted scholar of 
comparatively modern times, Scaliger, calls him “a divine 
man, and incomparable poet.” Says Byron, of his “ De Rerum 
Natura :” “If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epi¬ 
curean system, we should have had a far superior poem to 
any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin 
poems.” This poem, in which he sets forth the philosophy of 
Epicurus, consists of six books, and was published and dedi¬ 
cated to a friend, 58 years B. C. He made many original 
additions to the system of Epicurus. In this work Lucretius 
treats of the porosity of matter, the relative motion of ships 
and stars, and reviews the whole circle of natural sciences of 
the period in which he lived. He ascertained that light trav¬ 
els faster than sound, and observing that leaden projectiles 
melt where they strike, he asserted that heat was motion and 
concussion o i atoms. He gave natural explanations of pheno¬ 
mena which previously had been attributed to spiritual agency. 
He demonstrated that echoes were reflections of sound from 
hard upright surfaces, instead of the voices of fauns and satyrs. 
He also showed that the causes and spread of diseases were to 
be attributed to air and contact, rather than to the vengeance of 
angry gods. He laid down the axiom that nothing can be pro¬ 
duced, and that all things are formed by combinations of 
eternal and individual atoms. He held that the laws of Nature 
are the creative principles of the Universe — not the gods. He 
taught the materiality of the soul; that the mind is dependent 
on the body; that it is powerfully influenced by it, as in intox¬ 
ication, sickness, and danger; and that it must accordingly 
perish when the life-links that bind it to the body are burst 
asunder. He asserted that atoms inherently contained all the 
properties from which plants, and animals, and men, were 
derived, and that they were the base of all material forms — 
yesterday in the air, to-day in a leaf, to-morrow in a man —an 
atom is forever its own persistent, individual self. Upon the 
great plane of Being, man hath no pre-eminence above an 
atom. Like all other things, he finds his womb and tomb in 
universal Nature. Particular combinations of atoms produce 
effects which are called intelligent. Mind is a manifestation of 
the round and smoother atoms of matter. He tersely stated 


LUCRETIUS. 


205 


the doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the following lines, 
■which lose much of their beauty in the translation: 

“For seeds of bodies from eternal strove, 

And used by stroke, or their own weight, to move, 

All sorts of union tried, all sorts of blows, 

To see if any way would things compose; 

And so, no wonder they at last were hurled 
Into the decent order of this world,— 

And still such motions, still such ways pursue, 

As may supply decaying things by new. 

But more, some kinds must other kinds replace. 

They could not all preserve their feeble race; 

For those we see remain and bear their young, 

Craft, strength or swiftness has preserved so long.” 

He thus illustrates how Necessity is the mother of Invention: 

“We knew to fight before the help of art, 

To bruise and -wound before we framed a dart; 

And Nature taught us to avoid a wound, 

Before the use of arms and shields was found. 

Before beds were, even Nature threw us down 
To rest; we drank before a cup was known. 

These various thing convenience did produce; 

We thought them fit, and made them for our use*” 

Concerning the future of the soul he asks: 

“ And were the Soul immortal, would the Mind 
Complain of death, and not rejoice to find 
Herself let loose and leave this clay behind? 

Were souls immortal, and ne’er began, 

But crept into the limbs to make up man, 

Why can they not remember what was done 
In former times? Why all this memory gone?” 

Scorning the dainty dread of death, he asks his reader:— 
“‘Why should you. a common person, dread extinction, when 
mighty generals, philosophers, and poets have submitted?” 


206 


LUCRETIUS. 


He thus tells how the worship of gods arose in the dim 
primeval ages: 

“ For in thosfc early times, the tribes of mortals beheld in their 
minds, even when awake, glorious images as of gods, and saw 
them in their sleep still more distinctly, and of a wondrous 
magnitude of figure. To these, therefore, they attributed vital¬ 
ity, because they seemed to move their limbs, and to utter 
majestic words, suitable to their distinguished appearance and 
mighty strength. And they assigned to them an immortal 
existence, because their appearances came in constant succes¬ 
sion, and their form remained the same; although certainly they 
might have deemed them immortal on another account, as 
they would consider that beings endowed with such apparent 
strength could not easily be subdued by any force. And 
they thought them pre-eminent in happiness, because the fear 
of death could thus trouble none of them, and because, at 
the same time, they saw them in their dreams do many and 
wonderful actions, and experience no difficulty in the perfor¬ 
mance of them. Besides, they observed the revolutions of the 
heavens, and the various seasons of the year go round in a cer_ 
tain order, and yet could not understand by what causes these \ 
results were produced. They had, then, this resource for them¬ 
selves to ascribe all things to gods, and to make all things be 
guided by their will. And the seats and abodes of these gods they I 
placed in the sky, because through the sky the night and morn 
are seen lo revolve—the morn, the day, and the night, and the 
august constellations of night, and the nocturnal luminaries of 
the heavens, and the flying meteors, as well as the clouds, the 
sun, rain, snow, winds, lightnings, hail, and the vehement 
noises and loud-threatening murmurs of the thunder. O un¬ 
happy race of men! as they attributed such acts, besides ascrib¬ 
ing bitter wrath to the gods! What lamentations did they then 
prepare for themselves, and what sufferings for us! What 
fears have they entailed upon our posterity! Nor is it any 
piety for a man to be seen, with his head veiled, turning 
toward a stone, and drawing near to every altar; or to fall 
prostrate upon the ground, and to stretch out his hands before 
the shrines of the gods, or to sprinkle the altars with copious 
blood of four-footed beasts, and to add wars to wars; but it is 


LUCRETIUS. 


207 


rather piety to be able to contemplate all things with a serene 
mind. For when we look up to the celestial regions of th^ 
vast world above, and contemplate the firmament studded with 
glittering stars, and reflect upon the revolutions of the sun and 
moon, the apprehension lest there should, perchance, be an 
almighty power of the gods above us, which guides the stars 
in their various motions, begins then to raise its head, as if 
awaking within our breast an apprehension which, perhaps, 
before lay dormant under the weight of other cares; since 
poverty of reason arid ignorance of natural causes disquiet the 
mind, while it doubts whether there was any birth or com¬ 
mencement of the world, or whether there is any limit of time, 
until which the walls of the world, and the silent movements 
of the heavenly bodies, can endure this incessant labor; or 
whether the heavens, divinely endowed with an imperishable 
nature, can, as they roll along time’s eternal course, defy the 
mighty power of endless age. Besides, whose heart does not 
shrink at the terrors of the gods? whose limbs do not shudder 
with dread, when the scorched earth trembles with the awful 
stroke of lightning, and when the roars of thunder pervade 
the vast heaven ? Do not people and nations tremble ? And do 
not proud monarc!is, penetrated with fear of the deities, recoil 
in every nerve, lest, for some foul deed, or arrogant word, 
the dread time of paying penalty be come? When, likewise, the 
mighty force of a tempestuous wind, raging over the sea, 
sweeps across the deep, the commander of a fleet and all his 
powerful legions, does he not solicit peace of the gods with 
vows, and timidly implore them with prayers, for a lull of the 
winds, and a prosperous gale? But alas! he implores them to 
no purpose; for frequently, seized by a violent hurricane, he is 
nevertheless borne away to the shoals of death. Thus some 
unseen power, apparently, bears upon human things, and makes 
them a mere sport for itself. Further, when the whole earth 
totters under our feet, and cities shaken to their base, fall, or 
threaten to fall, what wonder is it that the nations of the 
world despise and tremble themselves, and admit the vast influ¬ 
ence of the gods over the world, and their stupendous power 
to govern all things?” 

The fundamental doctrine in his system he elaborates as fol- 


*208 


LUCRETIUS. 


lows: ‘‘But if things come forth from nothing, every kind of 
thing might be produced from all things; nothing would require 
seed. In the first place, men might spring from the sea; the 
scaly tribe and birds might spring from the earth; herds and 
other cattle might burst from the sky; the cultivated fields, as 
well as the deserts, m'ght contain every kind of wild animal, 
without any settled law of production; nor would the same 
fruit be constant to the same tree, but would be changed; and 
all trees might bear all kinds of fru.t. Since, when there 
should not be generative elements for each production, how 
could a certain parent producer remain invariable for all indi¬ 
vidual things ? But now, because all things are severally pro¬ 
duced from certain seeds, each is ; roduced and cpmes forth into 
the regions of light from that spot in which the matter and 
first elements of such subsist. And for this cause, all things 
cannot be produced from all, inasmuch as there are distinct and 
pecul'ar faculties in certain substances. Nothing can be made 
from nothing, since things have need of seed, from which all 
individuality being produced, may be brought forth into the 
gentle air of heaven. But were there no such seeds, you might 
see things severally grow up and become much better of their 
own accord without our labor. Add, too, that Nature resolves 
each thing into its constituent elements, and does not reduce 
anything to nothing.” 

Lucretius ably arguea against the notions of Creation, Spon¬ 
taneity, Design, and Annihilation, contending that nothing 
could come from nothing. He held that the world, and every 
object in the Universe, were arranged from pre-existent matter. 
Matter always existed in an infinitude of detached atoms, 
moving or falling through space, which is unlimited. These 
profound propositions of the poetical philosopher, portrayed in 
vivid verse, were advanced too early for general comprehension 
and acceptance. They lay dormant ; 11 through the long night 
of the succeeding centuries, until the waves of European evolu¬ 
tion of thought rose to the level of that lofiy plain touched 
by Socrates and Plato, Epicurus and Lucre, ius, and the other 
most piercing in ellects of glorious old Greece and Rome. 


» 


VIRGIL. 


209 


VIRGIL. 

This most celebrated of all the Roman pastoral, didactic and 
•epic poets, was born near Mantua, in Italy, seventy years 
before the reputed birth of Christ. He assumed the toga virilis— 
or, in other words, asserted his manhood — on entering his six¬ 
teenth year, on the very day, according to some accounts, on 
which Lucretius died; thus transmitting, without interruption, 
and with increasing splendor, the intellectual inheritance of 
Roman genius. 

He then proceeded to Milan, from thence to Naples, and 
finally to Rome, where he threw out many youthful produc¬ 
tions, and where, in time, he produced his magnificent Eclogues , 
Georgies and JEneid. The concurring testimony of critics of all 
ages have fixed the character of Virgil as a poet. In the 
highest attribute of genius — that of creating and bringing forth 
original conceptions, it must be admitted that he was deficient; 
but in improving on originals; in soundness of judgment and 
•correctness of taste; in depth and tenderness of feeling; in 
•chastened fancy and imagination; in vivid and picturesque 
description; in the power of appreciating and portraying the 
beautiful in Nature and art — of depicting passion and touching 
the finest chords of human sympathy; in matchless beauty of 
diction, and in harmony and splendor of versification, he 
.stands alone among the poets of his own country; and, with 
his great exemplar, Homer, has furnished the Christian poets 
from the beginning until now, especially Tasso, Dante, and 
Milton, with infallible patterns of plot, execution, diction, and 
style. Without Virgil and Homer — the heathen poets of anti¬ 
quity— Christian poetry of a high character would have been an 
utter impossibility. 

Interspersed with the poetry proper of Virgil are precious 
.gems indicative of deep thought, great wisdom, and mental 
independence, which will always entitle him to an honorable 
pedestal in the great Temple of Humanity. Space, however, 
will not permit the insertion of any of them here. 


210 


SENECA. 


SENECA. 

The father of this celebrated Roman moralist, philosopher, 
and statesman, was born at Corduba, in Spain, fifty-three years 
before Christ. He came to settle at Rome in the reign of 
Augustus, whither he brought with him his wife Helvia, and 
three sons. The first, named Mela, was the father of the poet 
Lucan; the second son, the subject of this sketch, was called 
Lucius Annaeus; the third son took the name of Junius Gallio, 
of whom mention is made in the “Acts of the Apostles.” The 
father (surnamed Marcus) compiled a valuable work from the 
remarkable sayings of more than a hundred Greek and Roman 
authors upon various subjects. This work contained the choicest 
declamations of all the eminent orators of that time. Of the 
ten books contained in this collection, only five now remain, 
and these are very defective. The younger Seneca, the famous 
Stoic and philosopher, was born at Corduba in the year 5 B. C., 
and was only a child when carried to Rome by his parents. 
There he received a liberal education, applying himself to the 
study of rhetoric, philosophy, and law. As an advocate, he 
soon displayed those great and brilliant abilities by which he 
rose to eminence; but being afraid of exciting the jealousy of 
the cruel Calligula, who himself aspired to the glory of elo¬ 
quence, he relinquished his profession as a pleader for the 
office of quaestor, in which he also became distinguished. 
Before engaging in the practice of law at Rome, it is said he 
had perfected his attainments by studying in the schools of 
Athens and Alexandria. In the first year of Claudius, when 
Julia, the daughter of Germanicus was accused of improper 
conduct by the infamous Messalina, and banished, Seneca was 
involved both in the charge and the punishment, and exiled to 
Corsica, where he lived eight years. He there lived happy, as 
he told his mother, in the midst of those things which make 
other people miserable, and wrote his book of “Consolation,” 
addressed to his mother and his friend Polybius. When Agrip- 


211 


\ ' • J 

. * ■ 


SENECA. 

pina was married to Claudius, upon the death of Messalina, 
she prevailed with the emperor to recall Seneca from banish¬ 
ment. She afterwards procured him to be appointed tutor to 
her son Nero. Another teacher, Burrhus, was joined with him 
in the important charge, the latter instructing the royal pupil 
i:i the military, and Seneca furnishing him with the principles 
of philosophy and the precepts of wisdom and eloquence; 
both endeavoring ^ to confine their pupil within the limits of 
decorum and virtue. While these preceptors united their 
authority, Nero was restrained from indulging his natural 
propensities; but after the death of Burrhus, the influence 
of Seneca declined, and the young prince began to disclose 
that depravity and cruelty which afterwards blackened his 
name with everlasting infamy. Seneca, however, still enjoyed 
his favor, and after Nero was advanced to the empire he 
long continued his preceptor with honors and riches. The 
houses and walks of Seneca were the most magnificent in 
Rome, and he had immense sums of money placed at interest 
in almost every part of the world. It is said that during the 
four years of imperial favor, he amassed the enormous sum 
of £2,421,875 English money. All this vast wealth, however, 
together with the luxury and effeminancy of a court, does not 
appear to have produced any improper effect upon the temper 
and disposition of Seneca. He continued abstemious, correct in 
his conduct, and, above all, free from flattery and ambition. 
“I had rather,” he said to Nero, “offend you by speaking the 
truth, than please you by lying and flattery.” While his influ¬ 
ence lasted at court, during the first five years of Nero’s reign* 
that period was considered a pattern of good government. But 
after the emperor had drifted into that career of cruelty and 
crime which has made his name to be abhorred for all time, 
he naturally grew weary of his preceptor, whose just and stain¬ 
less life must have been a constant rebuke to him. When 
Seneca perceived that his favor declined at the Roman court, 
and that he had many enemies about the emperor who were 
perpetually whispering evil about him in his ears, he offered 
to give up all his vast riches of every kind to the emperor, 
who, however, would not accept any such sacrifice, and as 
sured him of his abiding good will and friendship. The- pliilos- 


212 


SENECA. 


opher, however, knew Nero’s disposition too well to rely on 
his promises, and as Tacitus relates, “ he kept no more levees, 
declined the usual civilities, which had been paid to him, and 
under a pretence of indisposition, avoided, as much as possible, 
appearing in public.” It was not long before Seneca was con¬ 
vinced that he had made a just estimate of the cruel and 
treacherous tyrant, who now attempted, by means of Cleonicus, 
one of Seneca’s freed men, to take him off by poison. Nero did 
not, however, succeed at that time; but not long afterwards he 
found a pretext for destroying him. 

Tigellinus and Ru us, who had supplanted Seneca at court, 
sought to ruin him by exciting the emperor’s suspicions against 
him. At last he was accused of being an accomplice of Piso, 
who had been convicted of a conspiracy against Nero. He was 
commanded to immediately put himself to death. Seneca 
received this order with the utmost composure, and asked per¬ 
mission of the officer who brought the command to alter his 
will; but that being refused, he requested of his friends, that 
since he was not allowed to leave them any other legacy, they 
would preserve the example of his life, and exhorted them to 
exercise that fortitude which philosophy taught. After some 
further conversation with his friends, he embraced his wife, 
Paulina, and entreated her to console herself with the recol¬ 
lection of his virtues; but she refused every consolation exceot 
that of dying with her husband, and earnestly solicited the 
friendly hand of the executioner. 

After expressing his admiration of his wife’s fortitude, Seneca 
proceeded to obey the fatal mandate by opening a vein in each 
arm; but, in consequence of his advanced age, the v*tal stream 
flowed so reluctantly that it was necessary also to open the 
veins of his legs. Still finding his strength exhausted without 
any prospect of a speedy release, in order to alleviate, if possi¬ 
ble, the anguish of his wife who was a spectator of the scene, 
he persuaded her to withdraw to another chamber. He then, 
with wonderful self-command, proceeded to dictate many 
philosophical reflections to his secretary. Afier a long interval 
his friend Annaeus, to whom he complained of the tedious delay 
of death, gave him a strong dose of poison; but even this, 
through the feeble state of his vital powers, p oduced little 


213 






SENECA. 


effect. At last he ordered the attendants to convey him into a 
warm hath; and plunging into it he was soon suffocated. His 
body was consumed according to his own express order, in a 
will which he had made in the height of his prosperity. He 
was particularly averse to any funeral pomp. His w 7 ife, Paulina, 
having resolved to die with him, also had her veins opened; 
but Nero, fearing that this would excite general indignation 
against himself, commanded that the flow of blood should be 
stopped and her life preserved. 

The death of Seneca took place 65 A. C. He was an uncle 
of the poet Lucan. He was an eloquent and popular writer. 
His style is greatly admired. His works consisted of epistles, 
various moral treatises, and ten tragedies. The editions of 
these works are numerous, several of which have been trans¬ 
lated into English. His work on natural history and science 
is considered quite valuable; and his epistles are of some 
interest, both as revealing the true spirit of Stoicism, and 
as throwing light on the manners of the times. It has been 
reported that he held a correspondence with Paul by letters; 
but these letters, published under the name of the “Philosopher 
and Apostle,” have long been declared spurious by the critics 
and perfectly unworthy of either of them. 

Such was the excellence of many of his precepts, that he 
has been quoted by Christian councils and fathers of the church, 
although it is not certain that he ever heard of Christ or his 
doctrine. And when the world shall come to fully recognize and 
appreciate his superior worth, his stern and stoical rectitude, 
his moral grandeur and true Roman nobility; when it shall con¬ 
trast the virtuous sentiment with which his writings abound — 
the temperate, the pure and placid plan of life which he pursued 
in the midst of a corrupt and luxurious court, and, above all, 
his fortitude in death with the vicious and infamous career of 
his imperial pupil, the base and bloody Nero; it will accord to 
Seneca such honor and esteem as will be vouchsa ed to few 
others who lived in the very dawn of Christianity. 

From among the many excellent moral sayings of Seneca, 
the following are submitted to the reader: 

“Liberty and serenity of mind must necessarily ensue upon 
the mastering of those things which either allure or affright 


214 


SENECA. 


us; when, instead of those flashy pleasures (which even at the 
best are both vain and hurtful together), we shall find ourselves 
possessed of joys transporting and everlas ing.” 

“ Let us be liberal, then, after the example of our great 
creator, and give to others with the same consideration that he 
gives to us.” 

‘‘He who preaches gratitude pleads the cause both of God 
and man; for without it we can neither be sociable nor re¬ 
ligious.” 

“The true felicity of life is to be free from perturbations; 
to understand our duties towards God andean; to enjoy the 
present without any anxious dependence upon the future.” 

“He that fears, serves.” 

“Yirtue is the only immortal thing which belongs to mor¬ 
tality; it is an invincible greatness of mind, not to be elevated 
or dejected with good or ill fortune. It is sociable and gentle, 
free, steady, and fearless; content within itself; full of inex¬ 
haustible delights; and it is valued for itself '.” 

“This life is only a prelude to eternity, where we are to 
expect another original, and another state of things; we have 
no prospect of heaven here, but at a distance; let us therefore 
expect our last and decretory hoar with courage.” 

“To suffer death is but the law of Nature; and it is a great 
comfort that it can be done but once; in the very convulsions 
of it, we have this consolation that our pain is near an end, and 
that it frees us from all the miseries of life. . . . That death 
which we so much dread and decline is not the determination, 
but the intermission of a life which will return again.” 


STRABO. 


215 


STRABO. 


This distinguished Greek geographer was born in Cappadocia, 
flourished under Augustus, and died about the year twenty-five, 
at an advanced age. He studied rhetoric and Aristotelianism, 
but afterwards embraced Stoicism. On his professional travels 
through Greece, Italy, Egypt, and Asia, he endeavored to 
obtain the most accurate information respecting the geography, 
statistics and political conditions of the countries which he 
visited, and also thoroughly digested the geographical works of 
Hecatseus, Artemidorus, Eudoxus, and Erastosthenes, (now lost,) 
besides the writings of historians and poets. All his researches 
he embodied in a great geographical work, in seventeen books, 
■which is invaluable to all students of those times. This old 
heathen geographer is universally esteemed as honest and 
trustworthy—somewhat rare qualities among Christian trav¬ 
elers, from the earliest per'.od to the present time, arising from 
“pious fraud” on the one hand, and a display of empty sensa¬ 
tionalism on the other. Not to mention others, Marco Polo, 
Mungo Park, and Smyth, of “Smyth’s Hole” notoriety, are to 
the point. 

To the descriptions of countries, Strabo added notices of 
the customs and former history of the people, enlivened by the 
anecdotes, traditions, and comparisons which give interest to 
positive geography. His work is highly prized as an animated, 
broadly conceived, and skillfully executed picture of the world 
as known to the ancients. As Herodotus has been styled 
“The Father of History,” so Strabo may certainly be called 
The Father of (systematic) Geography.” 


216 


APOLLONIUS. 


APOLLONIUS. 

In the reign of Augustus Caesar, a remarkable teacher and 
prophet was born in Tyana, in Cappadocia. His birth occurred 
four years before that of his rival miracle-worker, the hero of 
Christianity. Many parallels might be instituted between 
the Cappadocian and the Judean savior. Indeed, Higgins’ 
Anacalypsis furnishes a list of upwards of fifty analogies com¬ 
mon to the career of both. The birth of both was announced 
to their mothers by the appearance of an angel or god. It is 
said that the advent of Apollonius was announced to his 
mother by an old marine god, named Proteus. Tradition tells, 
that while gathering flowers in a meadow, she fell asleep and 
dreamed she was surrounded by a circle of swans; that the 
clapping of their wings and the noise of their singing awak¬ 
ened her, whereupon she immediately gave birth to a son—the- 
subject of our sketch. The boy who was born into the world 
under such circumstances was of an old Grecian family cele¬ 
brated for its rank and wealth. He was early distinguished 
by beauty of person and power of intellect. He was sent to 
Tarsus at the age of fourteen to pursue his studies with an 
Epicurean philosopher. Considering the luxurious habits and 
ext avagant manner of living which there prevailed, unfavora¬ 
ble to philosophical study, he removed to iEgae—a far-famed 
seat of learning at that period. He here heard expounded the 
systems of the various schools, and accorded to each a serious 
and candid consideration. The peculiar force and independence 
of his character were here early manifested. His tutor 
indulged in a luxurious manner of life—in dainties, choice 
wines and beautiful women. These, however, had no attractions 
for the studious and sedate scholar, A house with a beautiful 
fountain and garden which his parent had purchased for him. 
he bestowed upon his Epicurean teacher with this simple dec¬ 
laration: “Live you in what manner you please, I shall live- 
after the manner of Pythagoras.” At that time he was sixteen,. 


APOLLONIUS. 


217 ' 


and thereafter he continued to subsist entirely upon fruits and 
vegetables, drank only water, let his hair grow and went bare¬ 
foot. A large fortune was left him at the age of twenty, which 
he divided with his elder brother, who was much addicted to 
wine, gambling, and other forms of dissipation. After having 
given his erring brother half of his inheritance, he succeeded by 
his gentle and affectionate treatment in effecting his complete 
reform. He bestowed the remainder of his fortune upon his 
needy relatives, only reserving tor himself sufficient to supply 
his simplest wants. 

At length he left Tyana and retired to the celebrated tem¬ 
ple of Escalapius, in iEgeae. The fame of his wisdom, ere long 
spread abroad. Yast numbers resolved to hear the wonderful 
new philosopher; and the temple soon became a lyceum. 
Such were the crowds that he attracted, that it became the 
common remark when people were seen walking rapidly: 
“They hasten to hear the young man.” The priests of the 
temple imparted to Apollonius all their magical and scientific 
secrets. It is related that he attained peculiar power over both 
the bodies and the souls of men, and that the god of the temple 
manifested delight at having him present. He taught the peo¬ 
ple that the only prayer to be addressed to the deities was; 
“O ye gods! grant whatever it is best for me to have!” He 
also persuaded the people to abandon the offering of bloody 
sacrifices. In his work on offerings he says: “A man may 
worship the Deity far m< re truly than other mortals, though. 
he never sacrifice animals, nor kindle fires, nor consecrate 
any outward ihing to that God, whom we call the First:, 
who is One, and apart from all, and by whom only we can 
know anything of the other deities. He needs nothing even 
of what could be given him by natures more exalted than 
ours. There is no animal that breathes the air, no plant the 
earth nourishes, no hing the world produces, that in compari¬ 
son with him is not impure. The only appropriate offering 
to him is the homage of our superior reason —I mean that 
which cannot be expressed by the lips—the silent inner word of 
the spirit. From the most glorious of all beings, we should 
seek for blessings by offering that which is most glorious in our¬ 
selves. Pure spirit, the most beautiful portion of our being, 


'218 


APOLLONIUS. 


has no need of external organs to make itself understood by 
the Omnipresent Essence.” 

In order to devote himself entirely to divine things, he 
resolved to abstain from marriage and the society of women. 
He also imposed upon himself a vow of silence, which he pre¬ 
served unbroken for five years. This period he passed in silent 
contemplation of divinity and philosophy, and in committing 
to memory whatever he read. During this time he never 
uttered a word, but only held communion with others either by 
writing, or by graceful motions of his head and hands. He 
was often oppressed by accusations being brought against him 
which his irksome vow would not allow him to answer. He 
always preserved a placid and undisturbed demeanor, repeat¬ 
ing to himself, when provoked to speech: “Be quiet, heart and 
tongue.” It is related that, under ail circumstances, and in 
spite of all that could be said or done to him, he was always 
courteous, and preserved the most perfect patience. 

During his term of silence, he happened at Aspendus, in 
Asia Minor, at a time when the women and children were 
weeping for bread, and a maddened mob was preparing to burn 
the governor, whom the enraged populace would not permit to 
.speak in his own defence. By his earnest gestures, Apollonius 
attracted the attention of the people, and made them under¬ 
stand that the governor must have a hearing. His strange 
dress and majestic mien favorably impressed the turbulent 
throng. He induced them to listen to the magistrate, who 
finally succeeded in convincing them that the famine was not 
occasioned by his fault, but was caused by a few speculators 
who had hoarded up the grain. The hunger-exasperated citi¬ 
zens then threatened to wreak their vengeance on them, but 
Apollonius, by his significant gestures, prevailed upon them to 
entrust their cause to him. He then wrote the following proc¬ 
lamation: “Apollonius to the monopolizers of corn, greeting: 
‘The earth is the common mother of all men; for she is just. 
You are unjust, for you have made her the mother of your- 
.selves only. If you do not desist from this course, I will not 
>suffer you to remain on the earth.’ This admonition was duly 
heeded, and the market was again filled with grain. 

At the expiration of his term of silence, he went to Antioch, 


APOLLONIUS. 


219 


whither he was followed by vast and curious crowds. In all 
his extensive travels he was faithfully followed by an Assyrian 
disciple named Damis, who fell in with him at Nineveh. He 
attended Apollonius everywhere, recording all his sayings 
and doings. Having once enumerated all the Asiatic dialects 
with which he was familiar, Apollonius replied: “I know them 
myself, though I never learned them. Ho not be surprised at 
this: for I can perceive even the thoughts of men, though they 
do not utter them.” 

At Babylon, whither his fame had proceeded him, he was 
offered apartments in the king’s palace; to which he replied: 
“Were I to live in a house above my condition in life, I should 
foe uncomfortable. Every sort of excess is irksome to philoso¬ 
phers, as the absence of it is to you, who are the great ones of 
the earth. For this reason I prefer living with some private 
man, whose fortune does not exceed my own.” The king 
becoming captivated by his conduct and conversation, pressed 
him to accept ten presents of his own choosing, at the same 
time urging him to ask only those he judged the most valu¬ 
able. There was at that time near Babylon a ijoor colony 
which had descended from the Greeks, taken captive in the 
time of Darius. They were then suffering for lack of sufficient 
food. The only boon he asked of the king was that he would 
generously redress their grievances. The mighty monarch 
promptly promised this, and wished him to specify nine other 
boons he would wish conferred upon him. Apollonius answered: 
“That which you have granted, I prize more than many tens 
of gifts.” “But is there nothing you yourself stand in need 
of?” kindly inquired the king. “Merely a little bread and 
fruit,” responded the philanthropist. 

He remained at Babylon a year and a half, during which 
time he mastered the mysterious lore of the magi. He then 
set out for India, well provided by the hospitable prince with 
attendants and provisions, camels, and letters of introduction. 
This journey was made by Apollonius for the purpose of pos¬ 
sessing himself of the world-famed learning of the Brahmins. 
His disciple, Damis, describes this journey with all the luxuri¬ 
ous imagery of the East. Apollonius became greatly prepos¬ 
sessed toward the philosophers of India, and praised them 


220 


APOLLONIUS. 


much in after years. He mentions them in a mysterious way 
as “men who dwell on the earth, and not on the earth,” “pos¬ 
sessing nothing, yet having everything.” He states how one 
restored sight to the blind, and cured cripples by simply touch¬ 
ing them. 

After a residence of five years, he took his departure from 
India. Upon his return he visited Antioch, Ephesus, Athens, 
Alexandria, Home, and numerous other cities. Everywhere he 
was followed by admiring multitudes, who were attracted by 
the beauty of his person, his unique costume, and the fame of 
his miraculous power. The renown of his wonderful wisdom 
had spread throughout Europe and Asia. At Olympia the pop¬ 
ulace wished to worship him as a god, but he would not permit 
them. At Ionia the priests placed the diseased in his care, and 
liis cures were considered so remarkable that divine honors 
were decreed to him. He entered the celebrated cave of Troph- 
onius in Boeotia, where he remained seven days writing the 
oracles in a book which he carried with him everywhere. 
Embassies from magistrates and monarchs who wished to avail 
themselves of his remarkable powers waited upon him contin¬ 
ually. The populations of cities poured forth in welcoming pro¬ 
cessions. Enormous wealth might have been his had ho 
accepted the costly gifts offered him. But he steadfastly refused 
them all, esteeming them unnecessary to his simple mode of 
life. His particular prayer was: “ O, ye gods! grant me to 
have few things, and to stand in need of none.” 

Finding the people of Ephesus engaged in games and danc¬ 
ing and frivolous pleasures, he exhorted them to desist and 
devote themselves to the pursuit of philosophy. He also 
warned them that they were soon to be visited by a fearfuL 
pestilence, and he offered prayers in all the temples to avert 
the impending calamity. But the people still rushed madly on 
in the pursuit of pleasure, heedless of his admonitions, and he 
soon left them or Smyrna. The citizens came forth in multi¬ 
tudes to meet him and to hear his words of wisdom. He had 
not been long at Smyrna before Ephesus was stricken by the 
plague as he had prophesied. Ambassadors were despatched to 
implore his speedy return. He immediately complied, and upon 
his arrival he told the fear-frenzied people: “ Be not dejected. 


APPOLLONIUS. 


221 


I will this day put a stop to the disease.” It is said that he 
soon succeeded in staying the ravaging mortality that had 
nearly decimated the inhabitants. A statute was erected to him 
in token of the city‘s gratitude. 

From Ephesus, Apollonius proceeded to Athens, where he was 
received by the philosophers with a joyful welcome. Although 
at first denied admission to the mysteries of the high priests 
by reason of his being a magician, he subsequently was initiated. 
He sternly reproved the gay Athenians for patronizing gladia¬ 
torial shows, and told them that their goddess, Minerva, would 
cease to protect a city which tolerated such cruel sports. His 
advent at Athens was attended by a signal display of his sin¬ 
gular gift in the dispossession of demons. One of the dissi¬ 
pated young citizens was afflicted with a disease which caused 
him to talk and sing to himself, and to laugh and cry by turns. 
His friends supposed this was the effect of intemperance. But 
Apollonius revealed to them that it was a case of obsession, and 
at once set about to cure him. It is said that as soon as he fixed 
his gaze upon the suffering youth, the tormenting demon burst 
forth into all the ejaculations uttered by victims undergoing the 
agonies of the rack, and swore he would instantly leave the 
young man and never enter another person. Upon Apollonius 
asking him to give some sign of his departure, he said: “I will 
make that statue tumble;” whereupon the statue began to 
totter and immediately fell. From that moment a great change 
came over the young man; his wildness entirely passed away, 
and he became temperate, and even led the life of a Pythago¬ 
rean philosopher. Apollonius then went to Borne. 

The bloody Nero had just issued severe edicts against those 
suspected of being magicians. He was met on the way by a 
fellow philosopher who sought to turn him back, by telling him 
the imminent danger to which those were exposed who wore 
the philosopher’s robe. His disciples were so intimidated by 
this warning, that out of the thirty-six in his company, only 
eight continued on with him to the seven-hilled city. Beaching 
Borne, he passed from temple to tenr le, piaying and delivering 
discourses upon religious worship. He was asked for what he 
prayed. His reply was: “That justice may prevail; that the 
laws may be obeyed; that wise men may be poor, and the rest 


222 


APOLLONIUS. 


of mankind rich, though not by fraud.” Every temple into* 
which he entered was soon crowded with eager listeners, who 
supposed they could secure through him greater favor from the 
gods. He visited no one. nor paid court to the rich and power¬ 
ful, though he was kind aud courteous to all. 

The cruel Ner > especially prided himself upon his poetry and 
singing, and punished as traitors all who did not applaud him. 
One day when the temples were thronged with the tyrant’s flat¬ 
terers, who were praying for his recovery from a hoarseness- 
which impeded his singing, the audacious Apollonius vented his 
indignation by exclaiming: “The gods must be forgiven if they 
take pleasure in the company of buffoons and jesters.” This 
treasonable utterance caused his arrest; but when brought 
before the tribunal for trial, it was lound that the parchment 
upon which the charges had been written was blank—all the 
characters having disappeared. Such was the influence Apollo¬ 
nius obtained over the magistrates that he was vouchsafed his. 
liberty again. 

. Among the many miracles he is said to have performed at 
Eome, the most memorable is that of having restored a dead 
maiden to life. She belonged to a family of rank, and had 
died suddenly when just about to be married. Apollonius hap¬ 
pening to meet the procession that was taking the body to the 
tomb, he ordered them to set down the bier, saying to her 
betrothed: “I will dry up the tears you are shedding for this 
maiden.” He bent over her, took her hand, and whispered a 
few words in her ear, whereupon she opened her eyes, began 
to speak, and was carried back alive and well to her father’s 
house. Accepting a large sum of money for this act fivm the 
rich relatives of the maiden, he at once delivered it to her as 
a dowry. 

We next hear of him at Alexandria, where his arrival caused 
a great sensation. A pompous procession escorted him from 
ti:e harbor to the town, through the narrow streets of which he 
was carried in triumph similar to that with which they carried 
the sacred symbols of the gods. Meeting upon his way twelve 
criminals who were being conducted to execution, he pointed 
out one who was innocent of the crime for which he had been 
condemned. An immediate investigation established his inno- 


APOLLONIUS. 


225 


cence to the satisfaction of his accusers, although a confession 
had been extorted from him by torture. 

Like Pythagoras, his great prototype, Apollonius professed to 
comprehend the speech of animals, and to possess peculiar power 
over them. There was a tame lion in Alexandria which was 
led about by its owner by a string like a dog, but which would 
never touch flesh nor lick blood. This royal beast was per¬ 
mitted to enter the temples, in one of which Apollonius happen¬ 
ing to meet it, he informed the spectators that the lion was 
animated by the spirit of Amasis, an ancient king of Egypt. 
.Hereupon the noble brute gave a piteous roar and burst into 
tears. Priests and people at once proceeded to array it with col¬ 
lars and garlands; and after having received the caresses of 
the whole city, it was, by a procession playing on flutes and 
chanting hymns composed for the occasion, conducted to the 
district where Amasis formerly resided. 

Apollonius went to Alexandria to acquaint himself with the 
Gymnosophists, a company of unclothed philosophers who lived 
in solitary places and observed peculiar forms of worship. One 
of this strange sect said to him: “We are naked. Here earth 
spreads no carpet under our feet. It affords us no milk, no 
wine. We are humble people. We live on the earth, and par¬ 
take of whatever things it supplies us with, of its own free 
will, without labor and undaunted by any magical influences. 
It is enough for a wise man that he is pure in whatever he eats, 
that he touches nothing that has had life, that he subdues all 
those irregular desires which make their approaches through the 
eyes, and that he removes far from him envy, a fruitful source 
of injustice.” 

The emperor Vespasian arrived at Alexandria while Apol¬ 
lonius was there. He formed a great friendship for the cele¬ 
brated Cappadocian, whom he used to consult as an oracle 
upon the most momentous matters of state. Apollonius per¬ 
sistently refused the large sums of money which the emperor 
frequently urged upon him. At a later period Vespasian 
invited him to come to his court. But some oppressive laws 
which the emperor had passed prompted this response: “ Apol¬ 
lonius to the Emperor Vespasian, health: you who, in anger, 
reduced free people to slavery, what need have you of my con- 

9 


•224 


APOLLONIUS. 


versation? Farewell.” The succeeding emperor, Titus, du^«ig- 
bis short reign, held him in great honor, and frequently solic¬ 
ited his sagacious counsel. But the tyrant Domitian, who next 
ruled Rome, jealous of his intimacy with his rival Nerva, and 
apprehending that his powers of magic might prove dangerous 
in case of a conspiracy, caused him to be ironed heavily and 
put into prison. His faithful follower Damis was thereupon 
nearly reduced to despair. He passed his time praying for the 
deliverance of his master from his critical situation. One day 
he asked him when he thought he should recover his liberty. 
Apollonius answered: “This instant, if it depended upon 
myself.” And freeing himself from his fetters, he added: 
“Keep up your spirits; you see the freedom I enjoy.” This 
satisfied the devoted disciple that his master’s nature was more 
than human. Upon his trial he defended himself with so much 
ability that he was released from prison, but was prohibited 
from leaving the city. In thanking the tyrant for his acquittal, 
the bold philosopher took occasion to speak of the deplorable con¬ 
dition of the empire under his miserable administration, adding: 
“Listen to me, if you will. If not, send persons to take my 
body. It is impossible to take my s ul. You cannot kill me, 
because I am not mortal.” It is related that upon pronounc¬ 
ing these words he vanished from the tribunal. It is also 
stated that after this transaction the emperor’s conduct changed 
behaving himself like a person under divine influence. Those 
best acquainted with the tyrant were surprised at the sudden 
•change in his manner of life. Apollonius had sent Damis 
away from Rome with the a surance that he would soon be 
with him again. It was noon when he had so mysteriously 
disappeared from the presence of the emperor. During the 
afternoon of the same day he rejoined Damis and other friends 
more than a hundred miles from Rome. They were greatly 
startled at his sudden appearance, and were in doubt whether 
or not it was his spirit. He held out his hand to Damis, ray¬ 
ing, “Take it, and if I escape from you, regard me as an 
apparition.” They marveled much when he told them that 
only a few hours before he had made his defense before the 
<emperor in Rome. He only said that they must ascribe the 
Tapidity of his flight to a god. 


APOLLONIUS. 


225 


We next get accounts of his travels in Greece. At Ephesus he 
established a school where he expounded questions of morality 
and the Pythagorean philosophy. He taught the assembled 
multitudes in the groves near the city. One day he suddenly 
stopped his discourse in speechless alarm, exclaiming in a loud 
voice: “Strike the tyrant! Strike him!” Then addressing the 
audience, he added: “Rejoice, Ephesians! The tyrant is killed. 
This very moment the deed is done. The news will soon be 
here. Meanwhile I will go and return thanks to the gods for 
what I have seen.” The news soon came that Domitian had 
been stabbed at Rome: and it was ascertained that the deed, 
had occurred at the precise time Apollonius had spoken. 

He lived to a very great age. When one hundred years old 
he is said to have been still vigorous in intellect and active and 
agreeable in person. There is a conflict of historical authority 
as to the mode and place of his death. Some contend that he 
died at Ephesus, others that it was at Crete. One tradition is 
tha he entered the famous temple of Diana at Crete, the rich 
treasures of which were guarded by furious dogs. Though 
generally very ferocious, the dogs on this occasion fawned upon 
him with unaccountable affection. At midnight sweet voices were 
heard singing: “Leave the earth and come to heaven! Come, 
Apollonius! Come!” He was never seen again. His followers 
believed that he had been carried to the gods without dying. 
His biographer, Philostratus, expresses doubts of his ever having 
died. He says: “I have gone over most parts of the known 
world, and in all countries met men who told wonderful things 
of him, yet I do not remember ever to have seen any tomb or 
cenotaph raised in honor of him.” 

A skeptical young student, who sought proof of the immor¬ 
tality of the soul, repaired to Tyana, where for nearly a year, 
he supplicated the spirit of Apollonius to appear, and thereby 
remove his doubts. Growing weary at last, he petulently ex¬ 
claimed: “Poor man, he is so dead that he cannot hear me, or 
he would appear in answer to my prayers, to prove that he is 
immortal.” It is related !hat a short time afterwards, while in 
the midst of his companions, he started up suddenly, excitedly 
exclaiming: “O, Apollonius, I believe you now.” He tried to 
point out the apparition of Apollonius to the company. “ Do 


22J 


APOLLONIUS. 


you not see him there listening to our disputations ? Have you 
not heard him saying wonderful things about the soul? ” Though 
invisible to the rest of the company, yet they believed that their 
companion had seen a vision sent solely to enlighten them 
regarding the nature and immortality of the soul. 

Great honors were paid to the memory of Apollonius, and his- 
fame long survived him throughout all the lands of the East. 
Tyana was considered a sacred city because it was his birth¬ 
place. The emperor Aurelian treated the citizens with uncom¬ 
mon lenity, in consideration of their celebrated countryman. The 
•emperor Adrian preserved a collection of his writings in the 
palace of Antium. The emperor Caracalla caused a temple to be 
erected and dedicated to his memory. The emperor Alexander 
Severus placed his statutes in the imperial palace with Orpheus, 
Abraham, and Christ. The Empress Julia procured Philostratus, 
an Athenian author of great reputation, to carefully prepare an 
account of his life. This biographical work, written in an at¬ 
tractive style, and published more than a hundred years after 
his death, is still extant, and contains all the traditions con¬ 
cerning the great Tyanean. In this volume a striking parallel 
is instituted between Apollonius and Jesus of Nazareth. Like 
the latter, Apollonius is claimed by his disciples to have cured 
diseases and cast out devils; restored the lame and blind, and 
brought the dead to life; like him, he controlled the laws of 
nature, and subjected everything to his miraculous power. Un¬ 
like his Christian rival, who, it is claimed, withered a tree, 
Apollonius caused one to bloom. He could speak in many 
tongues, and disappear in a mysterious manner. Like Jesus, it 
is claimed that he was born of a virgin, and was called the 
“Son of God;” like him he was a religious enthusiast, taught 
excellent maxims of purity and holiness, attracted crowds by 
his miracles and wonderful wisdom, and foresaw and foretold 
future events; and according to accounts as worthy of credit, at 
least, as those given in the “Gospels” concerning Jesus, Apol¬ 
lonius was also crucified, rose from the dead, and appeared to 
his followers after his resurrection; he satisfied a doubting 
Didymus by showing him the print of the nails in his hands 
and feet; and he was seen by many witnesses who saluted him 
as the “ God Incarnate,” the “ Lord from Heaven.” His recorded 


APOLLONIUS. 


227 


miracles are as well attested, and entitled to as much credit 
as those related of the Nazarene. His religion was inaugurated 
before that of Christ; and it is perfectly preposterous to 
assume, as some have done, in order to account for the striking 
similarity between these rival saviors, that the history of the 
former was plagiarized from that of the latter. Indeed, nothing 
appears in the volume of Philostratus which indicates that the 
Tyanean thaumaturgist or his biographer ever heard anything 
of the history or teachings of Christ. The early Christian 
fathers concede that Apollonius did perform the prodigies 
ascribed to him; although they attributed them to the aid of 
evil spirits and his proficiency in the art of magic. The great 
aim of Apollonius’ life w r as the restoration of the ancient re¬ 
ligion of Greece, freed from fables, and the placing of it upon 
a philosophical basis. His cardinal doctrine was simple l)eism 
— a belief in one supreme God. He taught that all the many 
other deities then worshiped in the world were only inferior 
spirits or agents. He often invoked the aid of these, believing 
they were mediators between God and man. To the Supreme 
Being he neither offered sacrifice nor prayers. He denied the 
efficacy of sacrifice, substituting for it a silent and simple wor¬ 
ship, and that pure and speechless prayer which ascends from 
the sanctuary of the soul. He led the life of an ascetic, his food 
and raiment being of the poorest. He sought the reformation 
of the religious rites of his time, and the substitution of correct 
conduct and pure philosophy for ceremonies and senseless sac¬ 
rifices. 

Apollonius surely livecf a pure and stainless life; and as a 
great moral teacher and wonder-worker, he occupies a place in 
the same chapter of human history occupied by Jesus. And 
among the score of remarkable men whose foolish followers 
have presented credentials for divine honors at the world’s 
grand tribunal, none have been more worthy the homage and 
admiration of mankind, than Apollonius of Tyana. 


228 


SIMON MAGUS. 


SIMON MAGUS. 

This great magician of Samaria, who, we are told in the 
“Acts of the Apostles,” offered money to Peter and Paul to 
obtain their power of conferring the Holy Ghost, w T as the pre¬ 
cursor of a large number of sects, which for ages proved to be 
very troublesome to the peace of the Christian Church. It 
seems that with the return of the Jews from Babylon, a great 
many Assyrian, Persian and Indian beliefs, sentiments, and 
practices actually flooded Syria and a large part of Asia Minor. 
Among these w T as the profession and practice of “magic,” which 
was soon afterwards still more widely extended over a vast ter¬ 
ritory by the general mixing of the peoples consequent upon 
the conquests of Alexander. So it was almost universally 
believed in Simon’s time that the forces of Nature could be 
controlled, diseases cured, and events foretold by the proper 
invocation of spirits; and high proficiency in this “art magic” 
procured for Simon the surname of Magus. 

Among the many wonderful miracles attributed to him may 
be mentioned the following: Controlling the elements; trans¬ 
forming himself into the semblance of other men and of several 
animals; rendering himself invisible; walking on the air; pass¬ 
ing through and sitting in flames uninjured; passing unob- 
structedly through mountains; constructing animated and self- 
moving furniture and statuary; his body casting many shadows 
in different directions at one and the same time; causing trees 
to suddenly spring up in desert places; causing a sickle to reap 
without hands; flinging himself from high precipices unhurt; 
creating a man from the atmosphere; raising the dead; and 
walking through the streets accompanied by spirits of the dead. 

We read in the Acts, that when Philip went to preach in 
Samaria, he found “Simon, who had used sorcery and bewitched 
the people, giving out that he himself was some great one; to 
whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, say¬ 
ing: “This man is the Great Power of God.” During the per- 


SIMON MAGUS. 


229 


formance of some “miracles” by Philip, it seems that Simon 
was baptized by him, probably expecting thereby to receive the 
“Holy Ghost,” as he must have heard that said “Ghost” had 
descended on Jesus at his baptism. Some time after this — we 
learn from the same source—when Peter and John were 
preaching in Samaria, “Simon saw, by laying on of the apos¬ 
tles’ hands, the “ Holy Ghost ” was given, he offered them 
money, saying: “Give me also this power, that on whomsoever 
I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost,” to which Peter 
indignantly replied: “Thy money perish with thee, because 
thou hast thought the gift of God may be purchased with 
money!” Now it seems that, if the above account be true, this 
conduct of Peter was in the highest degree uncourteous and 
reprehensible. Most probably Simon had been accustomed to 
pay his ice h rs generously for elaborate instructions in magic; 
and, judging Peter and John to be in possession of secrets 
unknown to him, he very naturally offered monev to them for 
divulging these to him. In this whole transaction he seems to 
have demeaned himself wuth great politeness and even rever¬ 
ence, as against Peter’s discourteous reply; for when the latter 
indignantly said: “ Eepent of this great wickedness, and pray 
to God if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven 
thee,” he meekly responded: “Pray ye to the Lord for me, that 
none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.” 

There can scarcely be a doubt that all that attracted him 
toward the Christian teachers was his desire to add still more 
to his stock of magical proficiency. The “New Testament,” at 
least, makes no further allusion to him. But other accounts 
represent him as acting in opposition to the “apostles” and 
their successors. There is no room here to descant on the his¬ 
tory of that traditional opposition, with its results, nor to give 
even an epitome of his philosophy. Suffice it to say that he 
was a kind of an Oriental Gnostic, and like Gnostics in general, 
full to the brim of metaphysical and transcendental modes of 
thought and expression. Such was his proficiency both as 
magician and religious teacher, that his followers placed him 
far above Moses and the Prophets. They, in fact, believed him 
to be the First-Born of the Supreme, sent on earth to free men 
from the imperfect laws given by the Jewish Jehovah, who was 


230 


SIMON MAGUS. 


one of the “rebelling spirits .” They also often called him 
“The Boot of the Universe.” Their highest aspiration was to 
be like him, so that they might be reunited to the Source of all 
things. They thought he performed wonders because he was 
the Great Power of God. It is said he himself professed to be 
“The Wisdom of God,” “The Word of God,” “The Paraclete, 
or Comforter,” “The Image of the Eternal Father, manifested 
in the Flesh,” and that he called Helen, (his inseparable com¬ 
panion,) the “Mother of the Universe,” sometimes “The Virgin 
of God,” or “ The Spouse of God.” And it appears some of his 
Greek proselytes worshiped him and “ Helen ” under the names 
of Jupiter and Minerva. Still others said he came to redeem 
the world from sin, and to destroy the Devil and his works; 
that he was the image of the Eternal Father; that, as the 
second person in the godhead, he took upon himself the form 
of a man; that he existed with God from all eternity, or in the 
fourth gospel’s very- words, that “he was in the beginning 
with God.” 

His Christian opponents did not deny his marvels, but attrib¬ 
uted them to the power of evil spirits. And his teachings also 
afterwards reappeared in various forms, to the great amazement 
of the Christian Church, so much so that Irenaeus, one of the 
earliest of the Christian Fathers said: “All who in any way 
corrupt the truth, or mar the preaching of the Church, are dis¬ 
ciples and successors of Simon, the Samaritan magician.” 

Simon did not consider the Jehovah of the Jews as the 
Supreme Being, but as leader of the inferior spirits who simply 
crea ed this earth, and were entrusted with its government. Of 
course the Hebrew books, inspired by this mere captain of a 
band of world-builders, could not be regarded by Simon as a 
perfect guide for men. He did not attempt to change the 
character of the scripts by allegorical interpretation, but 
unscrupulously condemned the text. 

As to the reality of the marvels attributed to Simon Magus, 
this much can be said. Almost everybody in his time believed 
in miracles; consequently there could not be then any compe¬ 
tent investigators and analyzers, or at least very few, and of 
these few those who attempted to publicly disprove the truth of 
those “ miracles,” had their books burned, or were otherwise 


SIMON MAGUS. 


231 


persecuted, both by Christians and Pagans. The truth seems 
to be that Simon was an adept in what the moderns would 
call legerdemain; that he was ambitious to excel all his rival 
magicians; that he was a diligent gleaner of new magical 
“tricks” from all quarters, even from the apostles Peter and 
John; that he really became the champion thaumaturgist of 
his day; that he soon exhausted all the Christian miracles, 
and therefore looked with something like contempt upon Chris¬ 
tian wonder-workers, who could only perform a very insignifi¬ 
cant part of his repertory; that his theories and philosophy, 
especially as regards cosmogony, the creation of man, the 
nature of the soul, and the destiny of the human race and the 
Universe were so much more sublime than the miserable theol¬ 
ogy and anthropology of the apostles, that he could not help 
at least looking on the latter with disdain and oppose them to 
their very face; and that his comparatively far superior doc¬ 
trines continued for a long time to be a thorn in the side of 
the Church. 

There can be no doubt that, apart from his occult profes¬ 
sion, Simon must have been a great sage and thinker, to pro¬ 
duce such a manifest and manifold effect upon his own and 
many subsequent generations. Probably nothing but a mere 
mutilation of his great system has come down to us. He was 
decidedly an Infidel in respect to almost all the cardinal doc¬ 
trines of the primitive church. If he had been brought up 
under the light and influence of the nineteenth century, there 
can scarcely be a doubt that he would rank with, if not above 
the very greatest thinkers of our day. As he was, he proved 
himself far ahead of his time, and this short account of him is 
far from being worthy of his wonderful talent, genius, and 
^honesty. 


PART II 


FROM JESUS TO THOMAS PAINE. 


JESUS. 


The admirers and worshipers of this character possibly may 
deem him out of place among the World’s Sages, Infidels and 
Thinkers ; but they will hardly deny him the dignity of a Sage; 
they cannot truthfully claim that he was not Infidel to much 
that he found existing at his time and that preceded him, and 
they will scarcely contend that he was unworthy to be esteemed 
a Thinker. 

In what is here said of this character he will be treated with 
cand >r and fairness, with all due respect for the opinions of 
those who pay him the highest admiration. 

It is to be regretted that the history of Jesus is not more 
authentic, and that like very many of the historical personages 
who preceded him and not a few who lived at later periods, a 
great deal of mythical uncertainty hangs around his name and 
story; and that with all the study that can be given to his 
birth and life, but little of certainty can be arrived at with 
respect to his career. 

All the data the world has concerning Jesus of Nazareth, is 
found in the four books called the gospels of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John; and unfortunately there is such an amount of 
uncertainty as to the reliability of those narratives that a cloucl 
of doubt hangs over the entire story. The books disagree in so 

283 




234 


JESUS. 


many important particulars; there is so much diversity of 
opinion as to who were their authors, and as to the periods of 
time when they were written, that they themselves stand greatly 
in need of confirmation. 

If Jesus is the important personage that his worshipers 
believe him to be; if his parentage was from the very high 
source claimed for him; if a belief in his existence and teach¬ 
ings is of the vast consequence to the world which his follow¬ 
ers think it to be, it is certainly to be regretted that a more 
authentic, clear, and reliable account has not been preserved of 
him, and that the world is compelled to depend upon the state¬ 
ments made by individuals of whom little or nothing can be 
known, who were not eye witnesses of the most important 
events they narrated, and who disagree in many important 
features of the story. 

It is claimed by Christians that the four writers referred to 
were moved by divine power to write what they did, and that 
what they said must be believed from this fact. If this is so it 
is most singular that neither of them made the claim that he 
was guided by supernal power, nor intimated that he was doing 
aught but relating a story that had come to his ears, and por¬ 
tions only of which he had witnessed. If they were inspired 
by a superior power they ought to have been apprised of it 
themselves, and if so they should have announced it to their 
readers. As they evidently had no thought that they were 
•writing by inspiration, there are no just grounds to assume that 
they did. As writers of events partly known and partly unknown 
to themselves, they are properly subject to the same examina¬ 
tion and the same criticism that all other writers are. As they 
state much that is mythical and improbable, not to say impos¬ 
sible, there is the same reasons for doubting their statements 
as those of other writers who narrate similar improbable and 
unnatural occurrences. 

There are very strong reasons for believing that what are 
called the gospels were not written at the time the events nar¬ 
rated were said to have taken place, nor by the persons to 
whom they are assigned. Christian writers admit that they 
were not written till from thirty years to sixty after the death 
of Jesus, and some make the term still longer. There is no 


JESUS. 


235 


proof that they were known to be in existence till well along 
in the second century. Irenmus is the first Christian writer who 
is known to have called attention to them, and he died in the 
f early part of the third century. It is presumable that had 
the gospels been in existence, they would have been referred 
to as authorities and for information and instruction at a much 
■earlier period than the middle of the second century. It is not 
difficult to conceive that those narratives may easily have been 
written by some unknown persons in the second century, and 
afterwards attributed to those whose names they have since 
borne. It will be observed that in neither of the gospels is the 
authorship claimed by the supposed writer, nor can it be shown 
by what authority the book of Matthew is accredited to Matt¬ 
hew, of Mark to Mark, and so with the others. 

Of the four gospel writers — admitting that the books were 
written by the persons whose names they bear —but two, 
Matthew and John, were disciples of Jesus, and were able to 
speak of what they saw and knew. Mark and Luke did not 
witness but a small part, at best, of the events of which they 
wrote, and necessarily were compelled to base their story upon 
the statements of others. Of Matthew, it may be said he 
Telated very remarkable incidents which he said to ;k place at 
the crucifixion, such as the darkening of the sun f r three 
hours, the rent which occurred in the veil of the temple, the 
earthquake, the rending of the rocks, the graves opening and 
the dead in them walking forth into the city, and which neither 
of the other writers so much as alluded to. This, to say the 
least, is a suspicious circumstance. If these very wonderful 
events occurred, the other three were very derelict in their duty 
not to mention them; but as neither of them seemed to know 
anything about the occurrence of such unheard-of events, there 
is the strongest grounds for doubting Matthew’s truthfulness, 
not only with regard to these particular events, but of what 
else he says also. 

We need not cite the great number of discrepancies which 
■exist between the statements of the four evangelists touching 
the story of Jesus, but they inevitably shake confidence in their 
accuracy and truthfulness. Matthew, in giving the genealogy 
of Jesus, and to show that he descended from David, mentions 


236 


JESUS. 


twenty-seven persons through whom the descent came, begin¬ 
ning with Joseph. Luke, in attempting the same thing, with 
the exception of the two ends of the line, David and Joseph, 
gives an entirely different line of descent, and gives foriy-two 
names of forefathers, in place of twenty-seven. One or the other 
must be wrong, and if Joseph was not the father of Jesus, both 
are utterly preposterous. In giving the genealogy of Jesus, that 
of Joseph, if not his father, can have no possible connection. 

Matthew mentions the destroying of all the infants in the 
country under two years of age; it was a remarkable and most 
cruel event, but the other three knew nothing of it, or if they 
did, did not deem it worth while to mention it. The four writers 
do not agree as to the time when Jesus entered Jerusalem. 
They do not agree as to the crucifixion, as to the inscription 
that was placed upon the cross. They do not agree as to the 
resurrection; they do not agree as to the place and time of his 
ascension. 

In giving the time of the birth of Jesus, there is a marked 
discrepancy. Matthew says he was born in Herod’s time, and 
that Herod caused all the little children to be killed on account 
of him. Luke says Jesus was born in the time of Cyrenius, 
when Augustus Caesar made the order that all the people 
should be taxed. Now Cyrenius succeeded Archelaus, who reigned 
ten years after the death of Herod. Here is a contradiction that 
cannot be explained away. The almost exact day of Herod’s: 
death can be arrived at, as shown by Josephus, who says on 
the night preceding the death of Herod there was an eclipse 
of the moon. In calculating back to the time of this eclipse, 
it is found to have occurred on the fourth of March, four years 
before Christ; another perplexing discrepancy. Matthew says he 
was born in the days of Herod, and John says it was in the 
days of Cyrenius, fourteen years afterwards. Again: Mark and 
Luke say Jesus began to be thirty years of age in the fifteenth 
year of the reign of Tiberius. Now the very day of his acces¬ 
sion is known, and by counting back we find Jesus must have 
been born four years before the Christian era, and disagreeing 
entirely with the statement of Matthew. A bad presentment, 
indeed, for divine historians. Can both of these statements be 
true ? Is not such history very unreliable and incredible ? Is 


JESUS. 


237 


it not an uncertain foundation upon which to base the salvation 
and eternal happiness of the world? In view of all the difficul¬ 
ties and discrepancies of the story, it can be appreciated why 
the learned Mosheim, an eminent Christian writer, should declare 
that “ the Apostolic history is loaded with doubts, fables, and 
difficulties,” and that the numerous pretended histories which 
were current in the early centuries, were filled with “pious 
frauds and fabulous wonders.” 

It is a well-known truth that in the second century the 
Christians were divided into many sects which bitterly disa¬ 
greed with each other. Prominent among these were the Gnos¬ 
tics, who were representatives of the Oriental school of thought, 
.and were supposed to have been the successors of the Essenes, 
They denied the corporeal existence of Jesus, and worshiped 
him as a spirit only. They stoutly claimed that Jesus had no 
bodily existence, and the contentions which arose between 
these and ihe sects who insisted upon his bodily existence 
were most bitter, until finally the Gnostics were overpowered 
>by superior numbers and compelled to silence. If at that early 
day an important branch of the Christians doubted and denied 
the corporeal existence of Jesus, does it not at least present a 
plausible reason why others who come after them should be 
troubled with the same class of doubts ? 

The bitter and long-continued contests which raged in the 
.fourth century between the Arians and the Athanasians, the one 
denying the divine nature of Jesus, the other affirming it, are 
matters of history. No le s than thirty-eight councils were called 
to settle their prolonged contentions, and during their sessions 
soldiers were employed by either side to defend their positions, 
and these sometimes engaged in the contes , and blood flowed 
freely. The conflict of opinion between the Arian bishop Mace- 
donius and the Athanasian Paul caused the death of three 
thousand persons in the streets of Constantinople. The Arian 
bishop of Alexandria sought to convert the Athanasian widows 
and virgins to sounder theological views by stripping them 
naked, scourging the soles of their feet and scorching them 
over slow fires. A Christian Emperor sought to convince the 
opponents of the Arian theory by drowning eighty priests upon 
£a single occasion. These controversies in the early ages of the 


238 


JESUS. 


Church convulsed all the great capitals of the East. Jerusa¬ 
lem, Antioch, Alexandria, Chalcedon and Constantinople were 
filled with anarchy, riot, outrage and murder. The cathedral at 
Ephesus was the theatre of fierce and brutal butchery, and 
Arius himself, as is. stated, was poisoned by Anathasian hands. 
[See Lecky’s “History of European Morals,” Yol. II. pp. 
207 - 209 .] 

When we consider the conspicuous place the name of Jesus 
Christ has occupied in the history of the Western world, it will 
doubtless startle the majority of persons that there is not a par¬ 
ticle of satisfactory and conclusive evidence to show that such 
a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever had a personal existence;; 
yet such is the fact. Professor John Eiske remarks that, while 
the Jesus of Dogma is the best known, the Jesus of history is. 
the least known of all the eminent names in history. Numer¬ 
ous volumes have been written under the titles of “ Life of 
Jesus,” and “Life of Christ,” but they are no more than 
romantic paraphrases of the gospels, and the gospels, as we 
have seen, and as can much further be elucidated, are in no 
sense historical records. We have nothing certain as to when, 
where, or by whom they were written. 

These gospels, and the stories built upon them, that have so 
many thousands of times been repeated, have been the means 
of preventing the name of Jesus from falling into oblivion. 
Though they were not written nor dictated by him; though not 
a line claimed to be written by him has come down to us, 
these gospels are supposed to embody his doctrines and teach¬ 
ings, and were supposed to contain the will of God and communi¬ 
cated from God to man through him, to be the guide and 
government of the world;—a mere dogmatic fiction introduced 
in order to maintain the super-human morality of the gospels. 
Now if it can be shown that this claim has no foundation, then 
it is plain that the Jesus of Dogma must follow the Jesus of 
History. 

The early Christian fathers made strong efforts to show there- 
had been such a personage, but these were insufficient to con¬ 
vince thousands who have studiously followed them. During- 
the first three centuries there appeared a great number of 
anonymous narratives regarding this supposed person, detailing 


JESUS. 


23J 


the events of his life, his sayings and doings. Many of these 
were promulgated by the various sects which prevailed in those 
times, and were each urged with more or less earnestness. 

Bishop Faustus, [Faust. Lib. 2,] in speaking of these early 
writers, correctly says: “It is an undoubted fact that the New 
Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apos¬ 
tles, but a long while after their time by some unknown persons, 
who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs 
they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the name 
of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their 
companions —and said they were written according to them.” 

According to various anthorities there were in the early 
centuries over two hundred different gospels and epistles, all 
differing from each other, and nearly all claiming to give a true 
account of this person Jesus. 

All these various gospels possessed the unsatisfactory charac¬ 
teristic of not giving the authors names, nor dates nor authen¬ 
tication for the improbable stories they narrated. They were 
not written in the language of the country where the events 
were said to have occurred, but in obscure and corrupt Greek; 
“a barbarous idiom,” as Campbell calls it, showing at least that 
the writers were not inspired with the gift of tongues. In 
speaking of the character of the language in which the gospels 
were written, Bishop Middleton in his “Essay on the Gift of 
Tongues,” says: “The Scripture Greek is utterly rude and 
barbarous, and abounds with every fault that can possibly 
deform a language; whereas we should naturally expect to find 
an ‘ inspired language * pure, clear, noble, and affecting, even 
beyond the course of common speech, since nothing can come 
from God, but what is perfect in its kind. In short we should 
expect the purity of Plato and the eloquence of Cicero.” 

The four gospels which, by the Council of Laodicea in 363, 
decided by vote to be true and reliable, came far from agreeing 
in their different versions. The printing press was unknown in 
those days, and the only way of multiplying copies of the gos¬ 
pels and epistles was with the pen, and this principally by 
monks, and each copyist seemed to exercise the right to change 
the reading as he chose; at all events there was nothing to 
prevent his doing so; and the great number of changes and 


2-10 


JESUS. 


alterations — amounting in the aggregate to many thousands — 
conclusively prove that the opportunities for changing were 
-extensively improved. Yery few of those copies were made 
from the originals. They were simply copies of copies, and 
there are now in existence no copies made nearer the time of 
Jesus than five hundred years. 

The learned Casaubon, in deploring the great lack of authen¬ 
ticity and beauty of the many gospels, uses this language: “It 
•greatly affects me to see how many there were, in the earliest 
times of the Church, who considered it a holy task to lend to 
heavenly truth the help of their own inventions in order that 
the New Revelation might be more readily admitted by the wise 
.among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they declared, were 
devised for a good end — from this source sprung up innumer¬ 
able books, published under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

It is supposed that Matthew’s gospel was written first, and 
that Mark and Luke were copied more or less from it — in some 
instances almost verbatim . They seem, however, to have been 
.somewhat uncertain as to Matthew’s crediblity, for they omit;ed 
several of the most wonderful parts, and rejected many of his 
most astonishing miracles. 

The first three gospels agree tolerably well, however, in the 
style of the discourses attributed to Jesus, which are parables 
and short pithy sayings, and they represent him as beginning 
his career in Galilee, proceeding to Jerusalem and suffering 
there. Their chief topics are, the fall of Jerusalem, and the 
approach of the kingdom of heaven. The fourth gospel, judged 
to have been written some time late in the second century, and 
strongly impregnated with the Platonic philosophy, is oi a very 
different character. The discourses of Jesus in this gospel are 
long controversial orations, and without parables. He is made 
to journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and back again many 
times; the kingdom of heaven is a secondary matter, and the 
fall of Jerusalem never alluded to; several new topics are intro¬ 
duced, as the “Incarnation of the Word,” or Plato’s Logon, 
applied to Jesus; his coming down from heaven; his relation 
to the Father; the promise of the Comforter; and an entire 
new set of miracles. 

Reber, in his “Christ of Paul,” shows pretty conclusively 


JESUS. 


241 


that John, the son of Zebedee, the accredited author of the 
fourth gospel, was never in Asia Minor, and makes out a strong 
case that he was not the writer of the book bearing his name. 
The same conclusion, in fact, was arrived at by Strauss and 
other able writers. The book has been attributed to Irenseus, 
but this hypothesis has again been put aside, but that it was 
written at a comparative late date, and by an unknown person, 
is a conclusion pretty definitely arrived at. 

Want of space will not permit extended quotations and 
remarks, nor even the attempt to point out the numerous dis¬ 
crepancies and disagreements between the four gospels. The 
fact that the Bible revisers who are at the present time devot¬ 
ing their attention to the gospels, find such a large number of 
errors in them, and that they have decided to expurgate cer¬ 
tain passages and verses from them, is, to say the least, a 
damaging argument against their authenticity and divine 
origin. 

An able English writer, in referring to the reliability of the 
gospels, thus expresses himself: “The ordinary notion, that the 
four gospels were written by the persons whose name they 
bear, has no foundation in truth, and has now been given up 
by all Christian writers. And here the admission of Bishop 
Faustus is conclusive and shows that the Christian world has 
Been all along kept in most strange and suspicious ignorance 
on this subject.” 

Upon the same subject the Rev. E. Evanson thus descants: 
*‘Although the gospels are to be received as the compositions 
of the Jews, contemporaneous and even witnesses of the scenes 
and actions they describe, yet their compositions do neverthe¬ 
less betray so great a degree of ignorance of the geography, 
statistics, and circumstances of Judea at the time supposed, as 
to put it beyond all question, that the writers were neither 
witnesses nor contemporaries —neither Jews nor inhabitants 
of Judea.” 

The eminent and learned French writer Jacolliot, ( Bible in 
India p. 280) in considering the credibility of the story of Jesus 
uses the following language: “ The life of the great Christian 
philosopher as transmitted to us by the Evangelists, his apos¬ 
tles, is but a tissue of apocryphal inventions, destined to strike 


242 


JESUS. 


the popular imagination and solidly to establish the basis of 
their new religion. It must be admitted, however, that the field 
was wonderfully prepared and that these men had little diffi¬ 
culty in finding adepts to place fortune and life at the service 
of reform. 

“Everywhere Paganism was in its last throes: Jupiter,, 
maugre his altars, had no longer believers; Pythagoras,, 
Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, had long evected him from their 
conscience. Cicero wondered that two priests could look at each 
other without laughing; for two ages past Pyrrho, Cimon, 
Sextus, Empiricus, Enesidemus no longer believed in anything. 
Lucretius had just written his book on Nature, and all the 
great spirits of the age of Augustus, too corrupt to return to 
simple principles and primordial lights, but staunch to reason, 
had reached the most perfect scepticism,—leading a life of 
pleasure midst oblivion of God and of the future destinies of Man. 

“On another side, these old and decaying theologies had left 
in the spirit of the multitude the idea of a Eedeemer, which 
ancient India had bequeathed to all the nations; and the 
wearied people waited for something new to replace their 
extinct beliefs, to nourish their energy, paralyzed by doubt, and 
in need of hope. He was then a poor Jew, though born in the 
lowest class of the people, did not fear, after devoting fifteen 
years of his life to study and meditation, to attempt regenera¬ 
tion of this epoch of decrepitude and of materialism.” 

The following very pertinent argument is made use of by 
the Eev. S. Baring-Gould in his “Lost and Hostile Gospels”:- 
“It is somewhat remarkable that no contemporary, or even early 
account of the life of our Lord exists, except from the pens of 
Christian writers. That we have none by Greek or Eomau 
writers is not, perhaps, to be wondered at; but it is singular 
that neither Philo, Josephus, nor Justus of Tiberias, sh uld 
have ever alluded to Christ or to primitive Christianity. Philo 
was born at Alexandria about twenty years before Christ. I t 
the year A. D. 40, he was sent by the Alexandrian Jews on a 
mission to Caligula, to entreat the Emperor no. to put in force 
his order that his statue should be erected in the temple of 
Jerusalem and in all the synagogues of the Jews. Philo was a 
Pharisee. He traveled in Palestine and speaks of the Essenes- 


JESUS. 


243 


he saw there; but he says not a word about Jesus Christ or 
his followers. It is possible that he may have heard of the 
new sect, but he probably concluded it Was but insignifi¬ 
cant and consisted merely of the disciples, poor and ignorant, 
of a Galilean Rabbi, whose doctrines he, perhaps, did not stay 
to enquire into, and supposed they did not differ fundamemally 
from the traditional teaching of the Rabbis of his day. 

“Flavius Josephus was born A. D. 37 — consequently only 
four years after the death of our Lord —at Jerusalem. Till the 
age of twenty-nine he lived in Jerusalem and had, therefore, 
plenty of opportunity of learning about Christ and early Chris¬ 
tianity. In 67 Josephus became governor of Galilee, on the 
occasion of the Jewish insurrection against the Roman domina¬ 
tion. After the fall of Jerusalem he passed into the service of 
Titus, went to Rome, where he rose to honor in the household 
of Vespasian and of Titus, A. D. 81. The year of his death is 
not known. He was alive in A. D. 93, for his biography is car¬ 
ried down to that date. Josephus wrote at Rome his “History 
of the Jewish War,” in seven books, in his own Aramaic lan¬ 
guage. This he finished in the year A. D. 75 and then transla¬ 
ted it into Greek. On the completion of this work he wrcte his 
“Jewish Antiquities” a history of the Jews in twenty books, 
from the beginning of the world t o the twelfth year of the reign 
of Nero, A. D. 66. He completed this work in the year A. D. 
93, concluding it with a biography of himself. He also wrote a 
book against Apion on the antiquity of the Jewish people. A 
book in praise of the Maccabees has been attributed to him, 
but without justice. In the first of these w r orks, the larger of 
the two, the “History of the Jewish War,” he treats of the 
very period when our Lord lived and in it he makes no men¬ 
tion of him. But in the shorter work, the “Jewish Antiquities ” 
in which he goes over briefly the same period of time treated of 
at length in the other work, we find this passage: 

“At this time lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed he ought to be 
called a man]; for he performed wonderful works [he was a teacher 
of men who received the truth with gladness}; and he drew to him 
many Jews and also many Greeks. [This was the Christ.] But 
when Pilate, at the instigation of our chiefs,, had condemned him to 


244 


JESUS. 


crucifixion, they who at first loved, him did not cease; [for he 
appeared to them on the third day again; for the divine prophets 
had foretold this, together with many other wonderful things con¬ 
cerning him], and even to this time the community of Christians 
called after him, continues to exist.” 

“That this passage is spurious has been almost universally 
acknowledged. One may be accused perhaps of killing dead 
birds, if one again examines and discredits the passage; but as 
the silence of Josephus on the subject which we aie treating is 
a point on which it will be necessary to insist, we cannot omit 
as brief a discussion as possible of this celebrated passage. 

“ The passage is first quoted by Eusebius, (fl. A. D. 315) in 
two places, (Hist. Eccl. lib. i, c. 11; JDemonst. Evang. lib. in) but 
it was unknown to Justin Martyr (fl. A. D. 140), Clement 
of Alexandria (fl. A. D. 192), Tertullian (fl. A. D. 193\ and 
Origen (fl. A. D. 230). Such a testimony would certainly have 
been produced by Justin in his apology, or in his controversy 
with Trypho the Jew, had it existed in the copies of Josephus 
at his time. The silence of Origen is still more significant. 
Celsus in his book against Christianity introduces a Jew. 
Origen attacks the arguments of Celsus and his Jew. He could 
not have failed to quote the words of Josephus, whose writings 
he knew, had the passage existed in the genuine text. He 
indeed distinctly affirms that Josephus did not believe in 
Christ, (Contr. Cels. i). 

“Again the paragraph interrupts the chain of ideas in the 
original text. Before this passage comes an account of how 
Pilate, seeing there was a want of pure drinking water in 
Jerusalem, conducted a stream into the city from a spring two 
hundred stadia distant, and ordered that the cost should be 
defrayed out of the treasury of the Temple. This occasioned a 
riot. Pilate disguised Roman soldiers as Jews, with swords 
under their cloaks, and sent them among the rabble, with 
orders to arrest the ringleaders. This was done. The Jews 
finding themselves set upon by other Jews, fell into con¬ 
fusion; one Jew attacked another, and the whole company 
of rioters melted away. ‘And in this manner,’ says Jose¬ 
phus, ‘was this insurrection suppressed.’ Then follows the 


JESUS. 


245 


paragraph about Jesus, beginning, ‘At this time lived Jesus, 
a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man,’ and 
so forth, and the passage is immediately followed by, ‘About 
this time another misfortune threw the Jews into disturb¬ 
ance; and in Rome an event happened in the temple of 
Isis which produced great scandal.’ And then he tells an 
indelicate story of religious deception which need not be 
repeated here. The misfortune which befell the Jews was, as 
he afterwards relates, that Tiberius drove them out of Rome. 
The reason of this was, he says, that a noble Roman lady who 
had become a proselyte, had sent gold, and purple to the tem¬ 
ple at Jerusalem. But this reason is not sufficient. It is clear 
from what precedes — a story of a sacerdotal fraud — that, there 
was some connection between the incidents in the mind of 
Josephus. Probably the Jews had been guilty of religious 
deceptions in Borne, and had made a business of performing 
cures and expelling demons, with talismans, and incantations, 
and for this had obtained rich payment. 

“From the connection that exists between the passage about 
the ‘other misfortune that befell the Jews,’ and the former 
one about the riot suppressed by Pilate, it appears evident that 
the whole of the paragraph concerning our Lord is an interpo¬ 
lation. That Josephus could not have written the passage as it 
stands, is clear enough, for only a Christian would speak of 
Jesus in the terms employed. Josephus was a Pharisee and a 
Jewish priest; he shows in all his writings that he believes in 
Judaism. 

“ It has been suggested that Josephus may have written about 
Christ as in the passage quoted, but that the portions within 
brackets are the interpolations of a Christian copidst. But 
when these portions within brackets are removed, the passage 
loses all its interest and is a dry statement utterly unlike the 
sort of notice Josephus would have been likely to insert. He 
gives color to his narratives; his incidents are always sketched 
with vigor; this account would be meagre beside those of the 
riot of the Jews and the rascality of the priests of Isis. 
Josephus asserts, moreover, that in his time there were four 
sects among the Jews —the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the 
Essenes, and the sect of Judas of Gamala. He gives tolerably 


246 


JESUS. 


copious particulars about these sects and their teachftigs, but 
of the Christian sect he says not a word. Had he wished to 
write about it, he would have given full details, likely to inter¬ 
est his readers, and not have dismissed the subject in a couple 
of lines. 

“It was perhaps felt by the early Christians that the silence 
of Josephus — so famous a historian and a Jew — on the life, 
miracles and death of the Founder of Christianity, was ex¬ 
tremely inconvenient; the fact could not fail to be noticed by 
their adversaries. Some Christian transcriber may have argued, 
Either Josephus knew nothing of the miracles performed by 
Christ,—in which case he is a weighty testimony against them 
— or he must have heard of Jesus, but not have deemed his 
acts, as they were related to him, of sufficient importance to 
find a place in his history. Arguing thus, the copyist took the 
opportunity of rectifying the omission, written from the stand¬ 
point of a Pharisee, and therefore designating the Lord as 
merely a wise man. 

“It is curious to note the use made of the interpolation now 
found in the text. Eusebius, after quoting it, says; ‘ When such 
testimony as this is transmitted to us by a historian who sprang 
from the Hebrews themselves, respecting the Savior, what sub¬ 
terfuge can be left them to prevent them from being covered 
with confusion? ’ ” 

The reverend author continues his arguments in a similar 
vein, showing conclusively that the spurious paragraph quoted, 
was never written by the Jewish historian; these would doub - 
less interest the reader, but the copious extracts already given, 
coupled with want of space preclude further quotations from 
this learned author. He arrived at the same conclusion touching 
the spurious quotation that many other eminent and learned 
Christian writers have. Dr. Lardner, one of the ablest Chris¬ 
tian writers, conclusively proves that Josephus was not the 
author of the paragraph, and exposes the subterfuge of the 
party or parties who dishonestly attempted to make the Jewish 
historian affirm that such a person as Jesus had an actual 
existence. Many writers ascribe the fraud to Eusebius. Whether 
he was the guilty party or not, he seems to have been the first 
to call attention to the passage; and according to the testi- 


JESUS. 


247 


mony of Mosheim—who certainly must be admitted to be 
a competent judge —Eusebius justified the policy of using fraud, 
if thereby the interests of the church could be promoted. 
In his “Ecclesiastical History,” (page 70) he says: “That it 
was not only lawful but commendable to deceive and lie for the 
sake of truth and piety early spread among the Christians of 
the second century.” The fathers easily fell into the practice 
■of pious fraud agreeable to the pattern of the Romish and other 
pagan priests who preceded them. Paul also inculcated the 
commendable nature of this species of piety. (See Rom. iii. 7.) 
There is scarcely a doubt that Eusebius was capable of being the 
author of the interpolated passage. 

This is all the proof that is found in the writings of the 
contemporary historians and writers of the time —in the first 
century — save, perhaps, the account attributed to Celsus (given 
on page290 which see) to show that there was such a person as 
Jesus — nothing else save the disjointed, imperfect and conflict¬ 
ing narratives ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 
though by whom written, where, or when, whether in the first 
or second century, no man knows. Candor and truth compel 
us to admit that the proof that Jesus had a real, personal 
existence is defective and doubtful; and it is indeed singular 
how an edifice so stately as Christianity should have been built 
upon a foundation so defective and uncertain. 

But waiving all doubt as to the historical existence of Jesus, 
and upon the basis that he actually lived upon the earth nearly 
nineteen hundred years ago, the questions arise, was he god or 
man ? Are the facts sufficient to induce the world to believe 
that he was anything more than an ordinary human being? 
Is there convincing proof that he was begotten without the aid 
of a natural father ? 

It is clearly established that the idea of demi-gods, and of 
the gods holding sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, 
of women becoming pregnant in a miraculous manner, without 
the co-operation of one of the male gender, was not new in the 
world at the time of Jesus. As has already been stated in this 
volume, Christna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and others 
were believed to be begotten without an earthly father. 

During the two thousand years preceding the time of Jesus, 


218 


JESUS. 


the pagan nations had believed in demi-gods, sons of gods, and 
saviors, many of whom were held to have been brought into 
existence by the direct interposition of heaven, and without the 
assistance of a natural father. Among these may be named 
Crite of Chaldea, Mithra of Persia, Baal of Phoenicia, Thammuz 
of Syria, Indra of Thibet, Deva Tat of Siam, Zulis of Egypt, 
Xamolxis of Thrace, Zoar of the Bonzes, Adad of Assyria, Alcides 
of Thebes, Beddru of Japan, iEsculapius of Egypt and Greece, 
Prometheus of Caucasus, Apollo, Adonis, and Hercules of Greece. 
To this list may be added Odin and Thor of Scandinavia, Hesus 
of the Druids, and at least a score of others we need not name 
whom tradition and legend hand down to us. It is not here 
claimed that these all had a real existence, or that even one of 
them had a real existence, but they were believed in from two 
to three thousand years ago. If God decided to reveal himself 
to man by a miraculous process it would certainly seem a little 
singular that he should be under the necessity of adopting the 
plans invented and believed in by pagans and heathens hun¬ 
dreds of years earlier. 

The theory of the divine paternity of Jesus rests entirely 
upon a dream that Matthew says Joseph had, and a vision 
which Luke says Mary^ witnessed. Of the means by which 
these writers obtained knowledge of the dream of Joseph and 
the vision of Mary, the world is left in utter ignorance. It can 
hardly be supposed that at the present day intelligent people 
could be made to believe a child could be begotten without the 
aid of one of the male sex, and that belief resting upon the 
authority of a dream or a vision, though even a score of people 
should make oath that the dream actually was dreamed, and the 
vision seen. Was such an event any more possible two thousand 
years ago than now, and should it be believed any more im¬ 
plicitly? If the dream theory is the true one, if Jesus was 
begotten by a ghost or spirit, and if it was a matter of vast 
importance that the world should have correct information and 
t e right belief in reference to it, how can Mark and John be 
excused for wholly ignoring the subject ? Which is the more 
probable theory, that Jesus came into existence without a nat¬ 
ural father, or that Matthew and Luke merely gave a new ver¬ 
sion of the ancient fables of celestial cohabitation? 


JESUS. 


248 1 


It is a very noticeable feature in the four biographies of 
Jesus that very little is said of his infancy, childhood, youth, 
and early manhood. With the exception of the single incident 
mentioned by Luke, about Jesus holding a discussion with 
learned doctors in the temple when twelve years of age, noth¬ 
ing is said of him between his early infancy and when he 
arrived at the age of thirty years. This is an extraordinary 
omission. If he was God, or the son of God, or the savior of 
men, it would seem the world ought to know something of his 
career during the thirty years of his life, through infancy, 
ch.ldhood and youth, and it can hardly be reconciled with a 
natural view of the case that his faithful biographers should ut¬ 
terly ignore nine-tenths of his life. Is it because they knew noth¬ 
ing of him during that period of thirty years, or that his occu¬ 
pation was of a character that should no; be known? If Mat¬ 
thew knew of the dream of Joseph which was dreamed sixty 
years or more before he wrote the account of it, and if Luke 
also wrote correctly of the vision Mary had more than sixty 
years previous, would it not seem reasonable that they ought 
to have been able to give something of the boyhood and youth 
of Jesus; whether he attended school, whether he served his 
time at a trade, what he did as he merged into manhood, and 
what was his occupation before he commenced to preach? 

During the first four centuries of the Christian era many 
scores of gospels and epistles were written by various pious, 
individuals, and these were attributed to sundry saints and' 
fathers, and one to Jesus himself; and in several of these 
gospels is a minute account of the infancy and childhood of 
Jesus; about his working miracles while he was still an infant; 
about his making oxen, asses, sparrows, and various kinds of 
birds of clay, and to which he gave life, so they walked, flew 
and partook of food. Many other remarkable feats are attrib¬ 
uted to him, like turning a mule into a young man, and kids, 
in a furnace into boys. It is also there related of him that he 
accompanied his reputed father at his daily work, and often 
corrected the mistakes his father made, by stretching pails y 
ga;es, doors, etc., when made too short. On one occasion 
Joseph had worked for two years at making a throne, when to 
his dismay he discovered he had made it too. small by two 


250 


JESUS. 


f 


spans. He was thrown into great trouble of mind by this 
blunder and retired to rest without eating any supper; but 
Jesus came to his relief by stretching the throne just to fill the 
space it was required to fill. As he came to manhood he 
worked at carpenter work, and was, of course, an excellent 
workman. 

A large portion of the narrations as well as the other Apoc¬ 
ryphal gospels and epistles were discarded by the church, while 
a portion believed them with the same facility as they did the 
four accepted gospels. Indeed it is difficult to see how they 
can be accurately analyzed and discriminated. One set appears 
about as authentic and as well substantiated as the other. Both 
contain improbabilities and impossibilities. Both sets, though 
strangely extravagant, could easily have been written by ingen¬ 
ious persons, of which there were many in those days. Con¬ 
flicting opinions arose in the early centuries as to the credi¬ 
bility of the various gospels and epistles which appeared so 
plentiful. All seemed to have their partizans and advocates, 
and the dissensions which grew out of these diverse opinions 
were sometimes very warm, and the means taken to decide 
which books were true and which false were at least original. 
Papias, the Christian father, informs us as to the manner of 
that selection at the Council of Nice, in 325, in the following 
words: “This was done by placing all the books under a com¬ 
munion table, and upon the prayers of the council the inspired 
books jumped upon the table, while the false ones remained 
under.” This explanation which perhaps ought to be satisfac¬ 
tory for all time, seemed to lose its potency after a short 
season; many derided the settlement, and priestly wrangling 
continued as fierce as ever. 

About the year 363 another council was called at Laodicea 
to make a more perfect selection of the holy books. This time 
the plan adopted was by vote; when the books now accepted 
as canonical— with the exception of the books of Hebrews and 
Revelations, were adopted.— Luke’s gospel was admitted by 
the majority of a single vote, so nearly did it meet rejection. 
After this, other councils for again settling the credibility of 
the gospels and epistles were held. One occurred in 406, and 
.another in 680. The first rejected some of the books which had 


JESUS. 


251 


} t>een accepted in 363, which afterward the council of 680 again 
Restored. In these councils, in the language of a writer upon 
the subject, “ the sacred writings — the word of God —was tossed 
like a battledore from sect to sect, and altered as the spirit of 
faction dictated.” The utmost turbulence and disorder often 
marked the action of these councils, and the bitterest quarrels 
between bishops and priests raged when the truth or falsehood 
of the several books was under discussion. The well-known 
Christian writer Tindal thus describes one of these scenes: 
“Indeed, the confusion and disorder was so great amongst 
them, especially in their synods, that it sometimes came to 
blows; as for instance, Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, cuffed 
and kicked Flavianus, patriarch of Constantinople, with that 
fury that within three days after he died /” This was the class 
of men who decided which writings were to be accepted as the 
word of God and which not. 

It is thus seen, as well as by the testimony of able students, 
that it was six centuries after the birth of Jesus before the 
representatives of the church were able to settle the matter as 
to which books were true and which false. Who can say 
that this contentious rabble decided correctly ? Who can 
show any good reason why the accepted books should not 
have gone with those rejected ? Of one thing we may be as¬ 
sured, many of the discarded books were long held by many 
learned bishops and Christian scholars to be equally as genuine 
as those accepted. Thus the learned Dr. Whiston, on page 28 of 
his “Exact Time,” declared that twenty-seven discarded books 
were genuine. “Can any one,” he enquires, “be so weak as to 
jmagine Mark, Luke, James and Jude, who were none of them 
^more than companions of the apostles, to be our sacred and 
unerring guides, while Barnabas, Thaddeus, Clement, Timothy, 
Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who were equally companions 
of the same apostles, to be of no authority at all ? ” 

Archbishop Wake, in his “Apostolic Fathers,’ 7 who actually 
translated St. Barnabas, St. Clement, St. Ignatius, St. Polycarp 
and St. Hermas, early Fathers of the Church, recommends 
them to the world as “inspired” and “as containing an author¬ 
itative declaration of the gospel of Christ to us.” 

Bishop Marsh says: “It is an undoubted fact that those 


JESUS. 


N 


252 

Christians by whom the now rejected gospels were received, 
and who are now called heretics, were in the right in many 
points o' criticism where the fathers accused them of wilful 
corruption.’’ 

On the other hand, many able Christians have denied the 
authenticity of several of the books that were admitted into 
the canonical New Testament. Even Luther himself denied 
the authenticity of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelations. 
The most reasonable conclusion that can be arrived at, is that 
all the books are equally unauthentic so far as being dictated 
by a supernatural power is concerned, and that in this regard 
one is as unreliable as the others. In this view of the case, 
the story of Jesus is held by a very uncertain tenure. 

Conceding to Jesus all the excellence of character, all the 
purity of life, all the superiority of morals claimed for him — 
and it cannot be denied that in the character attributed to 
him there is much that is lovely; much that is humane and 
benevolent, much that appeals to the finer feelings of our 
nature — the question remains to be decided, did he, in these 
respects, excel all who preceded him ? 

To unprejudiced and impartial minds it is difficult to see 
where, in point of talent, he surpassed Christna, Buddha, 
Zoroaster, Confucius, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, AristoTe, 
Zeno, Epicurus, and others before his time, and Epictetus, 
Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Mohammed, and others since 
his time. In fact, with many of these characters he hardly 
holds a comparison, in point of ability, education, and a long 
continued devotion in the service of truth and humanity. 

As a miracle and wonder worker he scarcely transcends 
Christna, Buddha, Apollonius, Simon Magus, Houdin, Her¬ 
mann, and thousands of the thaumaturgists of the present day 
in India, China, and various parts of the Oriental world. Nor 
can the claim be sustained that the story of his miracles and 
wonders are any better authenticated than those of the charac¬ 
ters named. In primitive times the working of miracles and 
marvels was claimed for the large number of demi-gods and 
distinguished characters which have figured in the world’s 
mythical story. The impossible feats which he is said to have 
performed were no more wonderful than those claimed for 


JESUS. 


253 


others before him and since. It has been asserted of many 
others that they have raised persons from the dead, and in 
various ways set Nature’s laws aside, but what sensible scholar 
or person, freed from superstition, can believe that a person, 
really dead, has ever been brought back to life, or that any one 
of nature’s laws has for a moment been suspended? 

It is not to be denied that the moral sentiments ascribed to 
Jesus were of an excellent character and that some of his utter¬ 
ances have rarely been excelled by the moral teachers of the 
world, but others have taught equally as pure morals and 
equally as grand sentiments, some of whom lived centuries 
before him. The Golden Rule which is considered the grandest 
of his moral sentiments was distinctly taught by Confucius five 
hundred years before. It was practically taught by Pittacus, 
Socrates, Sextus, Aristotle, Aristippus, Hillel, Publius Syrus, 
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius and others. If it was the divine 
spirit which caused Jesus to utter the fine moral sentiments 
which he is said to have taught, shall it be said that these 
others, who also taught unexceptional morals had not also an 
equal portion of the divine spirit? 

Upon close scrutiny it can hardly be claimed that all of his 
utterances and all of his actions were squared by the highest 
standard of morals which the world has known; nor did he on all 
occasions exhibit the most exalted and god-like traits of char¬ 
acter. His reply to his mother at the time he performed his first 
miracle, of changing water into wine, at Cana of Gallilee, was 
hardly of that filial character which would reasonably be looked 
for from a perfect being, when he rudely answered her solici¬ 
tude and anxiety with, “Woman what have I to do with thee ? ” 

It hardly indicated an amiable, self-possessed and equable 
state of mind to angrily curse a fig tree because it did not bear 
fruit at the wrong season of the year, when no reasonable per¬ 
son had a right to expect it would be in bearing. 

It did not indicate a loving, merciful and modest trait of 
character when he demanded that man should forsake and hate 
father, mother, brothers, sisters, wife, and children 01 his 
-account and that he set the nearest relatives at swords’ points 
with each other. 

Had he been all love, mercy and forgiveness he would not 


254 


JESUS. 


have consigned fallible man and woman to eternal torture for 
not believing in him, when he must have known, if he was all¬ 
wise, that belief is not a matter of choice, but that men are- 
compelled to yield to the force of evidence which commands 
conviction. 

If it would be regarded now as very questionable advice to- 
urge a man to pluck out an eye or to cut off his hand, because; 
either chanced to be affected with inflammation or other disease;,, 
instead of making proper applications to restore health, the 
advice would have been equally injudicious two thousand yeara. 
ago. 

Idleness and mendicancy, by example or precept, are far from 
being the best kind of lessons to impart to human beings; ta 
teach them habits of industry, frugality, providence and enter¬ 
prise, to instruct them in summer to provide for the winter, in 
youth for old age, is far more sensible than to enjoin them to 
“ take no thought for the morrow,” and to provide neither food, 
clothing, nor shelter for the future. It may once have been 
deemed the highest excellence to be an idle mendicant; to not 
labor and to counsel others not to labor, but now it is other¬ 
wise; honest industry is regarded as a virtue, and it is believed, 
to be commendable for man to be provident and to make rea¬ 
sonable exertions for future needs. Without due foresight and 
by taking no thought for the morrow and for future years tho 
world would indeed be in a sorry condition, without enterprise,, 
without energy, without systems of labor, without aims in life, 
without schools and colleges, without manufactories, it would 
be thrown back into barbarism and would afford but little to- 
render the race prosperous and happy. 

The disposition towards secrecy which Jesus manifested on 
several occasions, when he performed cures, to charge his disci.. 

■ s to teh no man, and the inclination he manifested to* 
•quent obscure places, the sea-shore and by-ways, and also; 
to a id observation when in Jerusalem and at other times, did 
, o bes eax the frank, bold and independent disposition which 
many great men have exhibited. 

The spirit of gentleness and benevolence was not particu¬ 
lar y exemplified in his parable of the ten pieces of money 
where he says: “But those mine enemies, which would not 


JESUS. 


25 * 

that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay before 
me.” Neither was his sympathy for the enslaved and down¬ 
trodden of the human race particularly portrayed in any 
measure he put in operation for freeing or ameliorating the 
condition of those in bondage and oppression. 

In point of personal bravery when brought to the hour oj! 
death Jesus compares unfavorably with thousands of human 
beings who have faced the king of terrors, without the slight¬ 
est flinching or trepidation. When in the garden of Gethsem- 
ane at the prospect of the approaching crisis he sweat great 
drops of blood and begged of his father if possible to “let this 
cup pass by” him — when in anguish and terror on the cross, as 
the solemn moment of dissolution drew nigh and he pite¬ 
ously cried out; “Eloi, Eloi, lama, sabachthani! (My God! my 
God! Why hast thou forsaken me!)” he fell far short of the 
calmness, fortitude and courage exhibited by the brave old 
Socrates who cheerfully drank the poison hemlock, and as the 
grim tyrant approached, he spake words of courage and cheer to. 
those around him, then calmly wrapped his mantle about him 
and laid himself down and died like one dropping away in 
sweet repose. 

As an original thinker Jesus did not greatly distinguish 
himself. It is equally true that the maxims and precepts which 
he taught had been uttered by others long before him; that 
the story of his conception, birth, life and death, had, as we 
have seen, been anticipated by others, hundreds of years earlier, 
and that every doctrine and dogma which constitute his system 
was originated by the heathens, centuries before he appeared 
on the earth. In recognition of this truth, Buckle, in his 
•‘History of Civilization,” (p. 129) says “That the system of 
morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim 
which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of 
the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quota¬ 
tions from pagan authors, is well known to every scholar; and 
so far from supplying, as some suppose, an objection against 
Christianity, it is a strong recommendation of it, as indicating 
the intimate relation between the doctrine of Christ and the 
moral sympathies of mankind in different ages. But to assert 
that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously 

10 




JESUS. 


unknown, argues, on the part of the asserter, either gross 
ignorance or wilful fraud. For evidence of the knowledge 
of moral truths possessed by barbarous nations, independently 
of Christianity, and for the most part previous to its promulga¬ 
tion, compare Mackay’s “Religious Development;” Mure’s 
“History of Greek Literature;” Prescott’s “History of Mex¬ 
ico;” works of Sir Wm, Jones; Mill’s “History of India, (and 
numerous others of the highest known authorities). 

It is a standing argument with Christians in favor of the 
divine approval which their system of religion has received, that 
it has spread so largely over the world, and that so many mil¬ 
lions of human beings have embraced it. According to this 
criterion Christianity is no more divine than Mohammedanism 
or Brahmanism, and far less so than Buddhism. The last 
two systems named existed many centuries before Christianity 
commenced, and have each had far more followers. Of Budd¬ 
hists alone, it is estimated they have reached a number ten 
times as great as all the Christians who have lived. To-day 
there are held to be 400,000,000 Buddhists in the world —three 
times as many as Christians can truthfully claim. If numbers 
are the test of the divinity and truth of the various systems 
of the world’s great religions, Christianity will have to stand 
about fourth in the scale. 

A comparison of the means by which these different systems 
of religion have been spread over the world is most damaging 
to the reputation of Christianity. B:ahmanism, the most an¬ 
cient, though it recognized caste and a priestly aristocra. y, still 
its history has not been bloody; it has not devastated the world. 
Buddhism has been peaceful in character; it has spread without 
■causing the flow of human blood. It did not persecute; it has 
not been a curse to the human race. Mohammedanism has 
been more aggressive; it has wielded the sword vigorou ly, an i 
has established its power by shedding the blood of the r .ce; 
but it is reserved to Christianity to bear away the palm in the 
great struggle for blood. It believes in the efficacy of blood in 
the salvation of the world, and it has bel eved in the efficacy 
of shedding human blood in the spread of its doctrines and 
power. In Christian wars and persecutions it is estimated that 
one hundred and fifty millions of the unfortunate sons and 


JESUS. 


257 


■daughters of men have been made to bite the dust, and that 
blood enough has been spilt in its name to make a river of the 
firs' magnitude, and sufficient to float all the navies of the 
world. It has been a most bloody religion; it has devastated the 
fairest portions of the earth; it has thrown into sadness and 
gloom whole nations and people; it has suppressed individual 
rights; it has mercilessly pursued its helpless victims at the 
secret hour of midnight; it has inflicted upon men, women and 
children the most cruel tortures human ingenuity could devise; 
it has crushed the liberty of thought and action; it has stifled 
the highest and holiest aspirations of the human heart. 

In speaking of the persecutions of the Christian priesthood 
in connection with the Inquisition Col. R. G. Ingersoll in 
“Heretics and Heresies” uses the following graphic and thrill¬ 
ing language: “The sword of the church was unsheathed, and 
the world was ;:t the mercy of ignorant and infuriated priests, 
whose eyes feasted on the agonies they inflicted. Acting as 
they believed, or pretended to believe, under the command of 
God; stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another 
world —hating heretics with every drop of their bestial blood; 
savage beyond description; merciless beyond conception — these 
infamous priests in a kind of frenzied joy, leaped upon the 
helpless victims of their rage. They crushed their bones in 
iron boots; tore their quivering flesh with iron hooks and pin¬ 
ners; cut off their lips and eyelids; pulled out their nails, and 
into the bleeding quick thrust needles; tore out their tongues; 
extinguished their eyes; stretched them upon racks; flayed them 
alive; crucified them with their heads downward; exposed 
them to wild beasts; burned them at the stake; mocked their 
cries and groans; ravished their wives: robbed their children, 
and then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell. Millions 
upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry. The 
Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Cath¬ 
olic, the Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presby¬ 
terian tortured the Episcopalian. Every denomination killed all 
it could of every other, and each Christian felt in duty bound 
to exterminate every other Christian who denied the smallest 

fraction of his creed.They have imprisoned and 

murdered each other, and the wives and children of each other. 



258 


JESUS. 


In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, 
every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, 
tender and loving women, beautiful girls, and prattling babes 
have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ. For 
more than fifty generations the church has carried the black 
flag. Her vengeance has been measured only by her power. 
During all these years of infamy no heretic has ever been for¬ 
given. With the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the 
clutch of avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon 
she has devoured; pitiless as famine; merciless as fire; with 
the conscience of a serpent; such is the history of the Church 
of God.” 

Although Jesus expressly said: “ I come not to bring peace, 
but a sword” he cannot be charged with the authorship of the 
countless horrible crimes that have been committed in his 
name, but his followers and supporters justly are. They have 
hesitated at no means to accomplish their ends and have not 
flinched at the blackest and most damnable cruelties and 
wrongs. Despite whatever may be said in favor of Christian¬ 
ity they have made the system a terror among men and have 
seemed to do all in their power to establish it one of the 
greatest curses the world has known. It is unjustly claimed 
by its partisans that it is the parent of modern science, civiliza¬ 
tion and learning, but a more untruthful claim can hardly 
be made. Our science and civilization is an outgrowth of 
the Sages, Infidels and Thinkers of the world, and no one form 
of religion, no one creed, can in truth claim the parent¬ 
age of modern civilization. So far as Infidelity, free from super¬ 
stition and error has been able to obtain a foothold, so far have 
learning, liberty, and human welfare progressed. Tor centuries, 
throughout the long night of the Middle Ages, when the Chris¬ 
tian Church was doing all in its power to suppress and extin¬ 
guish the last spark of mental freedom, learning and progress, 
the unbelievers in Arabia were encouraging and developing 
science and learning, and from them did we receive much in 
this direction, of the blessings we now enjoy. They were truly 
the conservators of much of the science and erudition which 
the nineteenth century boasts. It did not come from the teach¬ 
ing of Christ nor the practices and crimes of his church. 


JESUS. 


259 


There is no historical proof—we repeat—that such a person 
as Jesus ever had an existence; but that there might have been 
a pe:son by that name we will not deny. The name is synony¬ 
mous with Joshua and like James and John might have been 
very common in Judea nineteen hundred years ago, as it is in 
Mexico even at the present day. But as the story connected 
w T ith Jesus is in many respects so much like the earlier 
accounts and traditions pertaining to Christna, Buddha, Zoro¬ 
aster, Prometheus, Apollonius and numerous others, more or 
less mythical, that it seems altogether more probable that 
his story was borrowed, partly or wholly, from the pre-existiug 
legends and traditions, than that ihe old fables were again actu¬ 
ally reproduced in the person of Jesus. In reviewing him it is 
found that he originated little or nothing; that his maxims and 
beatitudes had been uttered before; that the wonders and mir¬ 
acles attributed to him were claimed as well for others; that 
in talents, powers and abilities he did not transcend other 
mortals; that if he did live on the earth, he was doubtless 
only a man to whom, ignorantly or designedly, deific charac¬ 
teristics were attributed. Had Europe, in the course and devel¬ 
opment of events, adopted either of the other systems of 
religion, or either of the other demi-gods or imaginary heroes — 
whether Christna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Prometheus, 
Apollonius, Mohammed, or any of the others of the long cat¬ 
alogue of prophets, philosophers, and moral teachers, we would 
doubtless, to-day, feel the same reverence for him that we do for 
Jesus. Each of the personages named, have, by millions of 
people, been as devoutly revered and worshiped as Jesus has 
ever been. 

Having already occupied more space with this character than 
originally designed, we can refer to the remarkable statements of 
his resurrection and ascension , only to relegate them to the realm 
of fiction and absurdity where they justly belong. Intelligent 
people at the present day have but little belief in the dead 
returning to life, or in physical bodies ascending into, and liv¬ 
ing in, the ethereal regions above. 

Many persons believe that Jesus was a member of the sect 
of Essenes which existed two centuries at least before the 
Christian era, or as many suppose, he was the outcome of the 


260 


JESUS 


great Messianic idea so long and so ardently cherished by the 
jews —an ideal to whom was attributed personal traits and 
characteristics. Numbers of such ideal characters have grown 
up in the minds of men in all ages of the world. In this Mes¬ 
sianic idea many find the source and origin of Chris ianity. 
Such do not believe Jesus to have been the author of Chris¬ 
tianity, but chiefly accredit it to Paul, who was doubtless a 
historical character, who was a man of considerable learning; 
who was a number of years in Asia, where he learned much of 
the mythical characters and religions which for thousands of 
years had previously existed in that quarter of the globe. 
Returning to his native land, it is but natural that he should 
bring with him many of the dogmas and notions he had learned 
abroad. Numbers of the most earnest investigators who have 
looked deeply into all the data that are known upon the subject, 
ascribe the authorship of Christianity to Paul, and believe that 
in founding a new religion in Judea, he used many of the older 
Eastern traditions and dogmas, and giving the characters and 
incidents he had there learned new names and new localities, 
he organized what the world has accepted as a new religion. 

From whatever source Christianity came, its history rests 
upon a very uncertain foundation, and it had during the first 
two centuries but a limited support. Its adherents were few and 
mostly obscure people, but, as has been the case with other 
similar movements, before and since, its numbers gradually 
augmented until the time of Constantine, who, by his bloody 
crimes, had fallen into disfavor with the pagans —priests and 
people — to whom he had been allied, and finding that the pagan 
priests would not grant him absolution for the crimes he had 
committed; finding that the Christian priests would grant it, 
and that he could make the growing sect subserve his ambi¬ 
tious purposes, he resolved to adopt their re.igion. Hence the 
miraculous “conversion” which he was so careiul to proclaim 
to the world; hence the rapid onward march which Christianity 
made after that time; hence the bloody, cruel, devastating, and 
almost interminable wars and persecutions which for succeeding 
centuries swept over Southern Europe, Western Asia, and North¬ 
ern Africa, and all in the name of the mild and amiable Jesus. 


PLINY THE ELDER. 


261 


PLINY THE ELDER. 


This icoman knight and philosopher was born at Yerona in 
the year 23 A. 0., and died in 97. He was one of the greatest 
scholars of Home. He devoted himself to jurisprudence, but 
made a campaign into Germany, an 1 afterwards filled many 
public offices, among them the office of procurator in Spain. 
His extraordinary spirit of inquiry was only matched by his 
unwearied industry. He appropriated to his studies every 
moment that was not employed in his public and private busi¬ 
ness. Winter and summer, he was a very early riser, and 
often did not retire to bed at all. He even used to read while 
at meals, and in the bath, or had somebody to read to him. 
Everything of importance that came within his observation, he 
diligently noted down. If not able to write himself, he dic¬ 
tated. He was the author of the famous saying, that no book 
was so bad but that something might be learned from it. Not¬ 
withstanding his many public affairs — civil and military — whicn 
he prosecuted with consummate ability, such was his unremitting 
assiduity in the pursuit of literature, that he wrote many 
important works, which gave ample proof of his extensive 
learning. But most of his writings are lost; among them his 
“Universal History.” His “Natural History,” in three books, 
however, is extant; and a rich mine of facts of every kind it 
is, including the whole circle of nature and science, as then 
known, and also the history of art. And the work is the more 
valuable, as the author drew from many lost books. 

The circumstances of his death, like his manner of living, 
were quite extraordinary, and have been described at large by 
the eloquent pen of his nephew, Pliny the Younger. His death, 
indeed, was the direct result of his indomitable curiosity and 
courage, and ranks among the grandest and most terrible of 
scientific self-martyrdoms. “ He was at that time, with a fleet 
under his command, at Misenum, in the gulf of Naples; his 
sister and her son, the younger Pliny, being with him. On the. 


262 


PLINY THE ELDER. 


twenty-fourth of August, in the year 79, about one in the after¬ 
noon, his sister drew his attention to a cloud of a very unusual 
size and shape. He was in his study, but immediately arose, 
and went out upon an eminence to view it more distinctly. At 
that distance it was not discernible from what mountain this 
cloud issued, but it was afterwards found to ascend from Mount 
Vesuvius. Its figure resembled that of a pine tree; and it 
appeared by turns bright, dark, and spotted. This was a noble 
phenomenon for the philosophic Pliny. He immediately ordered 
a light vessel to be got ready. But as he was leaving the 
house, with his tablets for his observation, the mariners at 
Retina earnestly entreated him to come to their assistance, 
since that post being situated at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, 
there was no way for them to escape, but by sea.” It was the 
first (recorded) grand eruption of the mountain that has caused 
so much consternation since! “He, therefore, ordered the gal- 
lies to be put to sea, and went himself on board, with the 
intention of assisting not only Retina, but several other towns 
situated upon that beautiful coast. He steered directly to the 
point of danger, whence others fled with the utmost terror; 
and with so much calmness and presence of mind, as to be 
able to make and dictate his observations upon that dreadful 
scene. He approached so near the mountain, that the cinders, 
which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell 
into the ships, together with pumice-stones and black pieces of 
burning rock; they were also in danger, not only of getting 
aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the 
vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain, and 
obstructed all the shore. Here he stopped to consider whether 
he should return. The pilot strongly advised him to do so. 

* Fortune,’ said he, ‘befriends the brave; carry me to Pompo¬ 
nianus. ’ 

Pomponianus was then at Stabiae, a town separated by a gulf 
from where he was then stationed. On his arrival there, he 
found Pomponianus in the greatest consternation, but exhorted 
him to keep up his spirits; and, the more to dissipate his fears, 
he ordered, with an air of unconcern, the baths to be got ready; 
when, after having bathed, he sat down to supper with apparent 
cheerfulness. In the meanwhile the eruption flamed out in 


263 


PLINY THE ELDER. 

\ 

several places with much violence, which the darkness of the 
night contributed to render still more visible and dreadful. But 
Pliny, to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it 
was only the burning of the village, which the country people 
had abandoned to the flames. After this he retired, and had 
some sleep. The court which led to his apartment being in the 
meantime almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had con¬ 
tinued there any longer it would have been impossible for him 
to have made his way out. It was therefore thought proper to 
awaken him. He got up and went to Pomponianus and the 
rest of the company, who were not unconcerned enough to 
think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it 
would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now 
shook from side to side with violent lockings, or to flee to the 
open fields where the calcined stones and cinders yet fell in 
large showers, and threatened destruction. In this distress they 
resolved for the fields, as the less dangerous situation of the 
two, and went out, having pillows tied upon their heads with 
napkins, which was all their defense against the storms of 
stones that fell around them. It was now day everywhere else, 
but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the most obscure 
night; which, however, was in some degree dissipated by torches 
and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go 
farther down upon the shore, to observe whether they might 
safely put out to sea; but they found the waves still running 
extremely high and very boisterous. There Pliny, taking a 
draught or two of water, threw himself down upon a cloth 
which was spread for him; when immediately a strong smell 
of sulphur, and then dreadful flames dispersed the rest of the 
company, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself, with the 
assistance of two of his servants, for he was corpulent, and 
instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as his nephew conjectures, 
by some gross and noxious vapor; for he had always weak 
lungs, and was frequently subject to a difficulty of breathing. 
As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day 
alter, his body was found entire, and without any marks of 
violence upon it, exactly in the same position that he fell, and 
looking more like a man asleep than dead.” 


264 


PLUT AROH. 


PLUTARCH. 


This eminent old biographer was born at Cheeronea in 
Boeotia, towards the latter years of the reign of Claudius, 48-53,. 
and is thought to have died about the year 120. He was mar¬ 
ried, and had two children, one of whom drew up a catalogue 
of his father’s works, and is supposed to have collected his 
apophthegms. After completing the usual course of academical 
education, he traveled for improvement, and is supposed to 
have visited Egypt. He gained an early reputation both as 
office-holder, student and philosopher. The emperor Trajan, 
who was one of his auditors, is said to have raised him to the 
consular dignity. He finally retired to his native place, of 
which he was chosen chief magistrate. 

Plutarch’s name is popularly known by his “Lives” of illus¬ 
trious men—forty-six Greeks and Romans — one of the most 
interesting remains of ancient literature. And considering that 
while a young man he had no leisure, as he says, to learn the 
Latin language, on account of the number of political commis¬ 
sions with which he was charged, it is surprising to notice the 
chaste, and on the whole, excellent style of his “ Lives ” and 
other works. A beautiful vein of pure morality runs through 
them, with a spirit of natural piety, but which, it must be con¬ 
fessed, occasionally deviates into a mild form of superstition. 
His moral treatises are numerous and valuable; the author, it 
is true, does not excel in depth and sagacity, but his sentiments 
are commonly marked with good sense and candor. In kind¬ 
ness of heart and humanity, few philosophers have surpassed 
him. 

Plutarch had also an exhaustive knowledge and great love of 
music, as far as music had advanced in his day, and there is 
more to be learned from his “Dialogue” concerning the histo: 
and practice of ancient music than from all the other ancient 
philosophers and mathematicians who have ever treated of the 
subject. 


PLUTARCH. 


265 


His philosophy was eminently rational and humane; and his 
lectures were attended by the most illustrious of the Romans, 
from the emperor down. Hi 3 beautiful letter of consolation to 
his excellent and well-mated wife, on the deaths of their chil¬ 
dren, is highly honorable to both parties. He has been justly 
praised by all ages for the copiousness of his fine sense and 
learning, for his integrity, and for a certain air of goodness 
which appears in all he wrote. It would seem that, musical as 
he was, liis business was, after all, not merely to please the 
ear, but to instruct and charm the mind; and in this none ever 
excelled him. The learned Theodorus Gaza was not so very 
extravagant when, being asked by a friend “if learning must 
suffer a general shipwreck, and he had only his choice of one 
author to be preserved, who that author should be?” he an¬ 
swered, “Plutarch.” And M. Villemain, another great critic, in 
alluding to Plutarch’s truthful and naive minuteness in the 
delineation of his characters, remarks: “The immortal vivacity 
of the style of Plutarch, seconded by a happy choice of the 
noblest subjects that can occupy the imagination and the- 
thoughts, explains the prodigious interest excited by his histor- 
cal works. He has painted man as he is; he has worthily 
recorded the greatest characters and most admirable actions of 
the human species. The attraction of such reading will never 
pass away; it appeals to all ages and conditions of life; it kin- 
d es the enthusiasm of youth, and commends itself to the sober 
wisdom of age.” 


■266 


TACITUS. 


TACITUS. 


This celebrated historian and tersest of writers was a con- 
tempory of the two Plinies. Besides his “Life of Agricola,” 
“The Treatise on the Germans,” “Annals” and “Histories,” he 
also wrote a “Dialogue on Orators/’ being himself, according 
to Pliny, one of the most eloquent orators and advocates of his 
age. His style is unusually bold and vigorous, and his works 
are full of philosophical and dramatic side-statements, of the 
most thoughtful, suggestive, and thought-kindling character. 
The effect is, that the reader often overlooks the bare historical 
facts, and carries away only the general impression which the 
historian’s animated drama presents. He was a profound 
-observer of character; it was his study to watch the slightest 
indications in human conduct, and by correctly interpreting these 
outward signs, to penetrate into the hidden recesses of the 
heart. His power of reaching those thoughts which are often 
almost unconsciously the springs of a man’s action, has perhaps 
never been equaled by any historical writer, except it may be 
by the noted Feuerbach, who, in his “Bemarkable Criminal 
Cases ” while laying bare the inmost soul of a murderer, makes 
us shudder at the contemplation of enormities of which every 
man is capable. 

He filled many public offices with scrupulous fidelity. His 
wife, the daughter of Julius Agricola, was distinguished among 
the Roman ladies of the time for her virtues. He lived in the 
closest intimacy with the younger Pliny. Amidst the corruption 
of a degenerate and vicious age, he maintained, in his writings 
and his life the elevation of a virtuous mind. 

There is a celebrated, but disputed passage in Tacitus, in 
which we read that those “ commonly known by the name of 
Christians,” were those people who were held in abhorrence for 
their crimes;” that “this pernicious superstition, though checked 
for a while, broke out again, and spread, not over Judea only, 
the source of this evil, but reached the city [Rome] also. 


TACITUS. 


267 


; whrther flew from all quarters all things vile and shameful, and 
‘ where they find shelter and encouragement.” Furthermore, 
the Christians are spoken of as noted “ for their enmitv to man¬ 
kind,” and as being “ really criminals and deserving examplary 
punishment.” 

Whether this passage be a forgery or interpolation upon the 
text of Tacitus, or not, it is equally weighty, no matter how 
considered, as showing the deserving contempt with which the 
Christian sect of fanatics was looked upon during the “holy” 
times of the “ Primitive» Church.” If the passage is original, 
we know that Tacitus was one of the most trustworthy of histo¬ 
rians ; if forged by a Christian (as some will have it) we know 
equally well that the admissions must have been written in 
deference to the prevailing sentiment as to the character of the 
Christians in the days of Nero. 

A few words more on this point. The sensational account, in 
this famous passage, of Nero’s “bloody” persecution of the 
Christians, (in order to save himself from the infamy of having 
set Eome on fire,) “betrays the penchant of that delight in 
blood and in descriptions of bloody horrors, as peculiarly char¬ 
acteristic of the Christian disposition, as it was abhorrent to tho 
mild and gentle mind and highly cultivated taste of Tacitus. 
It also bears a character of exaggeration, which the writings of 
Tacitus are rarely found to do.” Moreover, “it is not conceiva¬ 
ble that such * good and innocent people ’ as the primitive. 
Christians should not have sufficiently endeared themselves to 
their fellow-citizens, to prevent the possibility of their being so 
hated: and the whole account of the persecution is falsified by 
the New Testament, in which Nero is spoken of as the minister 
]0f God for good; and the Christians have the assurance of Goer 
himself, that so long as they were followers of that which was 
good, there was none that would harm them.” See 1 Peter iii: 13. 


268 


EPICTETUS. 


EPICTETUS. 


This illustrious philosopher was born at Hieropolis, in Phry¬ 
gia, about 60 A. C. He was originally the slave of Epaphro- 
ditus, one of Nero’s domestics. Simplicus asserts that he was 
born lame. Suidas says that he lost one of his legs when he 
was young in consequence of a defluxion. Celsus relates, that 
when his master, in order to torture him, bended his leg, 
Epictetus, without discovering any sign of fear, said to him, 
“you will break it;’’ and when his tormenter had broken the 
leg, he only said, “did I not tell you that you would break it?’’ 
Others ascribe his lameness to the heavy chains with which his 
master loaded him. 

Having, at length, by some means obtained his freedom, he 
retired to a small hut within the city of Home, where, with the 
bare necessaries of life, he devoted himself to the study of 
philosophy. He passed his days entirely alone, until his human¬ 
ity led him to take the charge of a child, whom a friend of his 
had through j)overty exposed, and to provide it with a nurse. 

By diligent study he became proficient in the principles of 
the Stoic philosophy; and notwithstanding his poverty, ho 
qualified himself for a public moral preceptor. He became very 
popular. It is said that his eloquence was simple, nervous, 
majestic, and penetrating. He was an acute and judicious 
observer of manners; and while inculcating the purest morals, 
his life was an admirable pattern of sobriety, magnanimity, and 
the most rigid virtue. 

Neither his humble station, nor his singular merit, could 
screen him from the tyranny of the monster Domitian. He 
was driven from Home and Italy with the rest of the philoso¬ 
phers, by an edict of the emperor in 89 A. C. He bore his 
banishment with a degree of firmness worthy of a phi'osopher 
who called himself a citizen of the world, and could boast, that 
wherever he went, he carried his best treasures along with him. 

He chose Nicopolis, in Epirus, for his residence, where he 


EPICTETUS. 


269 


soon became celebrated as a popular teacher of philosophy. He 
sought to correct the vices of mankind by his stern, Stoical 
maxims of morality. Wherever he could obtain an auditory he 
discoursed concerning the true way of attaining contentment 
and happiness; and the wisdom and eloquence of these dis¬ 
courses were so highly admired that it was the common prac- 
lice among the more studious of his hearers to commit them to 
writing. 

Epictetus himself wrote nothing. His beautifui “Moral 
Manual,” and his “ Dessertations,” were drawn up from notes 
which his disciples took from his life. His doctrines were 
recorded by his disciple Arrian in eight books, four of which 
have come down to us. 

His life was an example of temperance, moderation, and the 
highest morality. Says Professor Brandis: “The maxim, ‘ suf¬ 
fer and abstain from evil,’ which Epictetus followed throughout 
his life, was based by him on the firm belief in a wise and 
benevolent government of Providence; and in this respect he 
approaches the Christian doctrine more than any of the early 
Stoics, though there is not a trace to show that he was ac¬ 
quainted with Christianity.” 

After the death of Domitian, he returned to Rome, and suc¬ 
ceeded in gaining the esteem of Adrian and Marcus Aurelius. 
The Emperor Antoninus thanked the gods that he could collect 
from the writings of Epictetus wherewith to conduct life with 
honor to himself and advantage to his country. Into his favor¬ 
ite maxim, “Bear and forbear,” he resolved every principle of 
practical morality. 

But few events of his life are now known. He flourished from 
the time of Nero to near the close of the reign of Adrian. His 
memory was so highly respected, that, according to Lucian, 
the earthen lamp by which he used to study was sold for two 
thousand drachms. 

His style is concise, devoid of all ornament, but full of energy 
and useful maxims. Emperors acknowledged their thankful¬ 
ness to Epictetus, the slave, for his grand exposition of moral 
principles. His writings, though lass extravagant than any of 
the other Stoics, everywhere breathe the true spirit of the 
/Stoical philosophy. The doctrine of the immortality of the 


270 


EPICTETUS. 


soul was adopted and maintained by him with a degree of con- 

i 

sisteDcy suited to a more rational system than that of the Stoics, 
who inculcated a renovation of being in the circuit of events, 
according to the inevitable order of fate; and his exhortations 
to contentment and submission to province were enforced on 
different principles than those entertained by the Stoics. He 
strenuously opposed the opinions held by his sect in general 
concerning the lawfulness of suicide; and his whole system of 
practical virtues is undoubtedly the best that any philosopher 
ever presented to the world. He considered man as a mere 
spectator of God and his works; that his thoughts are all that 
man has any power over, everything else being beyond his con¬ 
trol; that time alone is his absolute and only possession, and 
that nothing else belongs to him. His maxim was, that all 
have a part to play, that he has done well who has done hie 
best, and that man must look to conscience as his guide. 

Few among the great names in philosophy, judged by the 
vigor and originality of their minds, the patient analysis by 
which they penetrated the shadowy depths of speculation, or 
the substantial service they have rendered to the human under¬ 
standing, are worthier deeper reverence than that of Epictetus, 
the sage and Stoic, the slave and philosopher. 


PLINY THE YOUNGER. 


271 


PLINY THE YOUNGER 

Was born in the year 62 , at Comum (now Como). With his 
uncle as his foster-father and exemplar, he naturally learned 
to make a wise use of time, and applied himself early, with the 
greatest diligence, to the study of eloquence and philosophy. 
He received and worthily filled many high a; pointments, civil 
and military. He was one of the best and most distinguished, 
and, we may also add, one of the most fortunate men of his. 
age. He had most of the requisites for the enjoyment of life — 
a cultivated mind, a generous heart, friendship and love. He> 
was a friend of the Emperor Trajan and of the historian 
Tacitus. Indeed, the friendship of Pliny and Tacitus became in 
a manner proverbial; and they were esteemed the most learned 
men of their time. Pliny was a man of strict frugality and 
temperance — affable and kind to all men — and exceeded by 
none in acts of beneficence, whether public or private. 

His name has, from the days of Tertullian, been mentioned 
with peculiar interest by Christian writers “ on account of the= 
testimony he bore concerning the Christians of his day in 
Bithynia, in a long letter to the Emperor, written about forty 
years after the death of Paul, A. C. 16 , and followed by a short 
answer from Trajan.” But that letter is supposed by many 
competent critics to have been very materially interfered with, 
by dishonest Christian interpolators for the benefit of their sect. 
And what seems to confirm the belief that his original letter 
did not by any means contain anything even remotely flatter¬ 
ing to that sect is his subsequent conduct toward these Bithy- 
nian Christians, whom he is said to have punished severely, and 
we doubt not, conscientiously, for the injury to society caused 
by their baleful superstition. And it is well known that 
Tacitus, his bosom friend, spared no form of invective in his 
historical treatment of this sect, that is, provided his “cele¬ 
brated passage ” be authentic. And even if it is spurious the- 
anti-Christian admissions must have been written in deference* 


272 


PLINY THE YOUNGER. 


to the prevailing sentiment as to the character of the Christians 
in these early days. 

Pliny was twice married, though his second wi P e only—his 
beloved and accomplished Calphurniais — mentioned by name. 
It is believed that he died about the end of Trajan’s reign, 
which was in 11G. 

In his famous letter to Trajan, alluded to above, Pliny 
accuses the Christians of “contumacy and inflexible obstinacy,” 
called their faith an “infatuation,” or “crime,” and an 
“austere and excessive superstition.” He found that the Chris¬ 
tians “ made it a practice, on a stated day, to meet together 
before day-light,” for certain purposes. And if this letter be 
genuine, these nocturnal meetings were what no prudent govern¬ 
ment could allow; they fully justify the charges of Cmcilius in 
Minutius Felix, oi Celsus in Origen, and of Lucian, that the 
primitive Christians were a sly, skulking, light-shunning, secret, 
mystical sort of confederation against the general welfare. 

However little room for doubt of the genuinenes of this cel¬ 
ebrate 1 letter there may seem to be, it is not to be concealed, 
however, that many German and English scholars have main¬ 
tained that its “neutral” and “persecuting” passages, at last, 
must be added to the long list of those Christian forgeries, 
which tended to make the historians and even philosophers of 
the first Christian centuries, from Josephus down, say something 
that might be construed as confirming the Christology of the 
gospels. 

They, in fact, actually stopped at nothing; and it was not 
only the ignorant and vulgar among them, but their best schol¬ 
ars, the shrewdest, cleverest, and highest in rank and talent, 
who were the practitioners of these rogueries and forgeries, as 
in the case of Origen, for instance, who actually embodied fraud 
into a system, practised it with the approbation of his fellows, 
and gave it the teehnical name of Economia , by which it has 
gone ever since. 

So, whichever way we look at Pliny’s “famous letter,” 
whether as genuine or forged, it emphasizes a terrible tale of 
Christian superstition, perverseness, unscrupulousness, and 
abominable crime, even in the very midst of those palmy days 
of so-called “primitive purity!” 


SUETONIUS. 


273 


SUETONIUS. 


This eminent Latin historian, born about 70 A. C., was a son 
of a military tribune. He was a friend of Pliny the Younger, 
who wrote him several letters, which are extant. He practiced 
law, and was well versed in various departments of learning. 
In the reign of Hadrian he obtained the office of magister epis- 
tolarum; but he did not care to keep it long. Pliny the Younger 
speaks in high terms of his integrity and learning. 

Besides numerous works which are lost, Suetonius wrote 
“The Lives of the Twelve Caesars,” which is highly prized, and 
appears to be impartial. The “Twelve Caesars” are the twelve 
emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian inclusive, whose pri¬ 
vate lives and vices he exposes, with copious details. Indeed, 
it has been pithily said of him “that he wrote of the emperors 
with the same freedom that they themselves lived.” 

There are extant two other works ascribed to him, one “On 
Illustrious Grammarians,” and the other “ On Celebrated Ora¬ 
tors.” He died about the year 123. 

It would be scarcely proper to close this short notice of the 
life of a wise and honest man without placing before the reader 
his testimony concerning the Christians of his time. He declares 
that “they were a race of men of a new and villainous, wicked 
or magical superstition,” and that “Claudius drove the Jews, 
who, at the suggestion of Chrestus , were constantly rioting, out 
of Borne.” In view of such testimony, primitive Christianity 
certainly appears in a very unfavorable light. 

It is remarkable to find, in consulting the Greek and Latin 
authors who wrote during the golden age of Christianity, how 
they either ignore the movement altogether, or notice it only 
in terms of almost unmitigated reproach. Many pages might 
be filled with these notices, and commentaries thereon, but 
more important matters claim all the space at command. 


274; 


LUCIAN. 


LUCIAN. 

This distinguished Greek writer was born of rustic parentage 
in Samosata, on the banks of the Euphrates, in the reign of Tra¬ 
jan, about the year 110. In his youth he was placed with his 
uncle to learn the art of statuary, but having no genius for it, 
he went to Antioch, engaged in literary studies, and embraced 
the profession of a pleader. But he was soon disgusted with 
the contentions of the bar, and confined himself to the practice 
of rhetoric, in which capacity he visited Greece, Italy, Spain, 
Gaul, and other countries. Sensible of his great merit, the 
Emperor M. Aurelius appointed him Begister to the Boman 
Governor of Egypt. He died about the year 200, at the great 
age of ninety. 

His numerous works chiefly consist of dialogues, in which he. 
introduces different characters with great dramatic propriety, in 
a style at once easy, simple, elegant, animated, and spiced with 
much of the true Attic wit. He has been accused of frequent 
obscenities; and his manner of exposing to ridicule almost 
every kind of religion, has drawn upon him the “pious” and 
canting censures of religionists and moralists of all ages. The 
truth is, he was a natural skeptic, and could not help indulging: 
his relentless wit at the expense of the multifarious supersti¬ 
tions and foolish traditions of his day. He is the only ancient 
writer, for instance, [see “De elect, seu Cygnis,”] who dared to* 
entertain a doubt of the musical capabilities of the swan. “He 
tells us, with his usual pleasantry, that he tried to ascertain 
the fact by making a voyage on the coasts of Italy; and 
relates, that being arrived at the mouth of the Po, he and his 
friends had the curiosity to sail up that river, in order to ask 
the watermen and inhabitants about the tragical fate of Phm- 
ton, and to examine the poplars, descendants of his sisters, 
whom they expected to shed amber instead of tears; as well as 
to see the swans represent the friends of this unfortunate 
prince, and hear them sing lamentations and sorrowful hymns 


LUCIAN. 


275 


night and day, to his praise, as they used to do In the charac¬ 
ter of musicians, and favorites of Apollo, before their change! 
But these good people, who had never heard of any such meta¬ 
morphoses, freely confessed that they had, indeed, sometimes 
seen swans in the marshes near the river, and had heard them 
croak and scream in such a disagreeable manner, that crows 
and jays were musical sirens compared with them; but that 
they had never even dreamed of swans singing a single note 
that was pleasing, or even fit to be heard!” 

No wonder, with these veins of healthy skepticism and an 
indomitable tendency to ridicule superstition with caustic wit, 
that Lucian has been unsparingly censured by religious fanatics. 
But the day of his memory's deliverance has dawned long ago, 
and he will at no distant day be generally ranked with our 
very best modern Infidels, wits, and humorists. 

We may here notice that a satire of Lucian’s — the “Pere- 
grinus Proteus ” —is known to have been written as a parody on 
“Christian Martyrdom,” which, in many cases, had become a 
mere pompous and sensational display of voluntary death before 
assembled multitudes. Peregrinus, after having a bombastic 
eulogy delivered by an admirer over his proposed act of mar¬ 
tyrdom, and after having some invectives delivered against him 
by another orator, not his admirer, in which invectives are 
traced his life of early villainy, his subsequent crimes, his 
journeys from land to land, his playing the hypocrite and turn¬ 
ing Christian at Antioch, his rising to the dignity of a bishop, 
his expulsion for disobedience, liis subsequent wanderings and 
crimes, and the universal contempt which he had brought upon, 
himself, finally pronounces his own eulogy, proceeds to erect 
his own funeral pile, and consumes himself upon it; after 
which he was seen in white and a symbolic hawk (note done!) 
ascended from his pyre! The moral which Lucian draws from 
the whole matter is, that such people as this blatant, suicidal 
Peregrinus ought to be despised, and that their sensational con¬ 
duct ought to be imputed to ignorant and fanatical love of 
empty fame. Lucian has here used a real name to describe a 
class, not a person. He has given a caricature painting from 
historic elements. There seems internal evidence to show that 
he was acquainted with the books of the early Christians. It 


276 


LUCIAN. 


lias even been conjectured that lie might have read and designed 
to p rody the Epistles of Ignatius. The points which he depicts 
in his satire are the credulity of the Christians in giving way 
to Peregrinus; their unintelligent belief in Christ and in 
immortality; their almost worshiping their bishops as gods; 
their pompous vanity in martyrdom; and possibly their ten¬ 
dency to believe legends respecting a martyr’s death. His 
satire is intellectual contempt, not anger, nor dread. It is the 
humor of a thorough skejitic, discharging itself on ignorant 
folly, vulgar credulity and barbaric superstition. 

In his dialogue, entitled “ Philopatris,” Lucian speaks of a 
Galilean with a bald forehead and a long nose, who was car¬ 
ried (or rather pretended that he had been carried) to the third 
heaven, and speaks of his hearers as a set of tatterdemalions 
almost naked, with fierce looks, and the gait of madmen, who 
moan and make contortions, and swear by the son who was 
begotten by the father! What a fine set to be the spiritual 
rulers of mankind! 

No wonder Pope Alexander VII., in 1664 placed this tract in 
the index of prohibited books. Donaldson, in his account of 
the life, opinions, and works of Lucian, draws a comparison 
between him and Voltaire. 


* 


ANTONINUS PIUS. 


277 


ANTONINUS PIUS. 


This excellent Koman emperor, a son of Aurelius Fulvus, 
was born at Lanuvium in the year 86 A. C. He became consul 
in 120, after which, as \ ro-consul, he governed the province of 
Asia with wisdom and equity. He married Annia Galeria 
Faustina, and was adopted by Hadrian in 138, on condition 
that he should adopt Marcus Annius Yerus, (who succeeded 
him on the throne) and Lucius Yerus. Antoninus succeeded 
Hadrian in July, 138, and under happy auspices began his pros? 
perous and peaceful reign. He appears to have treated the 
troublesome and seditious Christians with moderation, if not 
clemency. From all accounts he was a temperate, humane, ami¬ 
able, learned, and eloquent man, and governed the Roman world 
with the invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. “Although Pius 
had two sons, he preferred the welfare of Rome to the interest 
of his family, gave his daughter Faustina in marriage to young 
Marcus, obtained from the Senate the tribunitian and procon¬ 
sular powers, and with a noble disdain, or rather ignorance of 
jealousy, associated him to all the labors of government. Mar¬ 
cus, on the other hand, revered the character of his benefactor, 
loved him as a parent, obeyed him as his sovereign, and, after 
he was no more, regulated his own administration by the ex¬ 
ample and maxims of his predecessor. Their united reigns are 
probably the only period of history in which the happiness of 
a great people was the sole object of government. 

Titus Antoninus Pius has been justly denominated a second 
Numa. The same love of religion, justice, and peace was the 
distinguishing characteristic of both princes. But the situation 
of the latter opened a much larger field for the exercise of 
those virtues. Numa could only prevent a few neighboring 
villages from plundering each other’s harvests. Antoninus 
diffused order and tranquillity over the greatest part of the 
earth. In private life he was an amiable, as well as a good 
man. The native simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to 


278 


ANTONINUS PIUS. 


vanity or affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the conven¬ 
iences of his fortune, and the innocent pleasures of society; 
and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful 
serenity of temper.” The name of “Father of his Country” 
was conferred on him by the Senate. He died in 161, and was 
succeeded by Marcus Aurelius. His memory was so greatly 
venerated that five of his successors assumed the name of An¬ 
toninus. 

The following portrait of him was drawn by the hand of his 
loving son and successor: 

“In my father I noticed mildness of manners and firmness 
of resolution, contempt of vain glory, industry in business, 
accessibility to all who had counsel to give on public matters, 
and care in allowing to every one his due share of considera¬ 
tion. He knew when to relax as well as when to labor; he 
taught me to forbear from licentious indulgences; to conduct 
myself as an equal among equals; to lay on my friends no 
burden of servility; neither changing them capriciously nor 
passionately addicting myself to any. From him I learnt to 
acquiesce in every fortune; and bear myself calmly and se¬ 
renely; to exercise foresight in public affairs; and not to be 
above examining the smallest matters; to rise superior to vulgar 
acclamations and despise vulgar reprehensions; to serve man¬ 
kind without ambition; in all things to be sober and steadfast; 
not led away by idle novelties; to be content with little; enjoy¬ 
ing in moderation the comforts within my reach, but never 
repining at their absence. Moreover, from him I learnt to be 
no sophist, no schoolman, no mere dreaming bookworm; but 
apt, active, practical, and a man of the world; yet at the same 
time, to give honor to true philosophers; to be neat in person, 
cheerful in demeanor, regular in exercise, and thus to rid myself 
of the need of medicines and physicians: again to concede 
without a grudge their pre-eminence to all who specially excel 
in legal or any other knowledge. My father was ever prudent 
and moderate; he neither indulged in private buildings, nor 
extravagant public shows. He looked to his duty only; not to 
the opinion that might be formed of him. He was temperate 
in the use of the baths, modest in dress, indifferent to the 
beauty of his slaves and furniture. Such, I say, was the whole 


ANTONINUS PIUS. 


279 


character of his life and manners, nothing harsh, nothing ex¬ 
cessive, nothing rude, nothing which betokened roughness and 
violence. It might be said of him, as of Socrates, that he could 
both abstain from and enjoy the things which men in general 
can neither abstain from at all, nor enjoy without excess.” 

It may not be inappropriate to contrast this pagan Emperor 
with the character and conduct of some of the Christian Empe¬ 
rors and Popes who ruled in Rome after him. It is so much a 
rule among Christians to hold up their early Fathers, Emperors, 
and Pontiffs as paragons of excellence and virtue, and to repre¬ 
sent the pagans as sunken in vice, crime, and pollution, that it 
is well sometimes to draw comparisons. Contrast, for instance, 
this excellent man, Antoninus Pius, with the great Christian 
Emperor Constantine, who is elevated to a saintsh : p in the 
Christian Calendar, and over whose remarkable conversion so 
much ado has been made; who, under the banner of the cross, 
carried the sword of conquest, and war, and bloodshed into 
many peaceful localities; and who, in addition to a long cata¬ 
logue of other crimes, caused to be beheaded his own son Cris- 
pus, in the very year in which he called together and presided 
over the noted Council of Nice; who drowned his unoffending 
wife, Fausta, in a bath of boiling water; who murdered Bassi- 
anus and Licinius, husbands of his two sisters, Constantia and 
Anastasia; who murdered his own father-in-law, Maximian Her- 
culius; w r ho put to death his nephew, only twelve years of age, 
the son of his sister Constantia, and who caused the death of 
his former friend, Sopater. Will the conduct of this great Chris¬ 
tian Emperor and propagandist enable the reader to perceive 
the vast superiority of Christianity as a moral religion over 
paganim ? 

In the reign of Antoninus Pius an able work was written 
against Christianity by Cresceus, a Cynic philosopher; and 
another by the tutor of Marcus Aurelius,— Concleus Fronto of 
Cirta. The attack of Cresceus called out a miserable reply from 
Justin Martyr. Minucius Felix refers to Fronto as having 
positively charged incestuous banquets on the Christians. Part 
of Fronto’s works have been found during the present century, 
and edited by Angelo Mai. 


280 


MARCUS AURELl US. 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 


This good Roman emperor, son-in-law and successor of An¬ 
toninus Pius, was born April 8, A. C. 121, at Mount Celius.. 
He ascended the throne in the year 161, on the death of his 
excellent father-in-law, whom he dearly loved, and of whom, 
as father and counselor, he bore noble and grateful testimony. 
The habits of mind which Aurelius had cultivated during the, 
period of his probation, however, were little fitted to give him 
foresight of the troubles that were impending; but the hope 
that his peculiar training might render him a model of sover¬ 
eigns, and the recollection of the splendid saying of Plato, that 
states would surely flourish if their princes were philosophers, 
sustained him in his arduous and unwelcome task; and great 
was his success. 

During the long reign of Antoninus Pius, who had given him 
his daughter Faustina in marriage, Marcus distinguished him¬ 
self principally by his studies in philosophy, having assumed 
the mantle of the Stoics in his twelfth year; while Yerus, his 
foster-brother, so far disgraced himself by his bad conduct, that 
his adopted father disinherited him and procured the nomina¬ 
tion of Marcus as sole emperor by the Senate. On his acces¬ 
sion, however, with rare disinterestedness, Marcus Aurelius, 
who now assumed the name of Antoninus, associated the disin¬ 
herited Yerus with himself as his colleague, giving him an 
equal share in the government, w T hich he thought would be of 
utility to all parties, since he was himself of weak frame, 
inclined to philosophic pursuits and literary leisure, and averse 
to war on principle. It was his fortune, however, to be 
forced into action, and to be constantly involved in war; and 
though little aware of the unparalleled demands which the 
exigency of public affairs would make upon his energies, he 
showed that he had gained a conquest over himself; and with 
a firm resolution and clear perception of duty which formed a. 
part of his truly philosophic character he overcame his phys- 


i 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 


281 


ical disabilities, his moral dislike to war, and his leaning to 
mental pursuits, and proved himself both a resolute and suc¬ 
cessful general, and a wise and moderate statesman. Shortly 
after his accession a war broke out with the Parthians in the 
East, the command of which, nominally given to Yerus, was 
virtually held by his lieutenants, the principal of whom, Avidius 
Cassius, overran Mesopotamia, destroyed Seleucia, and pene¬ 
trated as far as Babylon, while one of his colleagues made 
himself master of Armenia. This oriental outbreak was fol¬ 
lowed by hostilities in the North, extending along the whole 
length from the sources of the Danube to the Illyrian frontiers. 
Here they were so successful that in A. C. 169, the enemy sued 
for peace, and the two emperors who had conducted the war 
in person, set out on their return to Borne; but Yerus dying of' 
apoplexy on their journey, and the war being renewed, Marcus 
Aurelius again turned his face northward, and for the next five 
years carried on the war in person, enduring the greatest hard¬ 
ships, and conducting his campaigns wi h the skill of a fin¬ 
ished soldier, and bringing the war to a successful termination. 
Though too profound a philosopher to be a believer of the 
Christian superstition, then comparatively n^ew, he was so far 
from persecuting the sect, as has been asserted by many Chris¬ 
tian writers, that although the pagan priests and governors 
of provinces, desired to revive the persecution against them, the 
emperor not only forbade it, but to protect Christians from 
violence in the remote provinces, he wrote to the convention, 
then sitting at Ephesus, this admirable letter, secured to us by 
Eusebius: “As for the persecutions you raise against these 
people upon the score of religion, it does but fortify them the 
more in their persuasion; and since they believe they lose their 
lives for their God, you may imagine they rather wish for 
death and reckon it an advantage. . . . Several governors- 
of provinces have formerly written about this business to the. 
late emperor, our father of divine memory. The answer they 
received was that they should give that persuasion no trouble, 
unless they found them practicing against the State. Now, I 
being willing to follow my father’s measures, and being solici¬ 
ted by several about this matter, my instructions were to the 
same purpose. And therefore ii any one for the future shall 


282 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 


prosecute a Christian merely on account of his religion, the 
Christian shall be discharged and the prosecutor punished.” 
This letter, according to some authors, was published and 
strictly obeyed: but others maintain that this epistle, as well 
as another attributing his victory over the Marcomanni to the 
•‘thundering legion,” are base fabrications, and ought to be 
rejected as undoubtedly spurious. 

Profound prosperity and internal peace marked his reign, for 
except the rebellion headed by Avidius Cassius and planned by 
his wife Faustina, which was quickly suppressed and forgiven, 
not a single act of violence disturbed the empire. 

His kind and generous treatment of his younger brother 
Yerus; his love and adoration of his wife Faustina, covering 
all her faults; his clemency to the family of Avidius Cassius, 
and those who aided his rebellion, speak for themselves. He 
lived in stormy times, but was ever equal to any emergency. 
As emperor, general, statesman, philosopher and forgiver, he 
stands without a rival. He died in the midst of a career of 
uninterrupted triumph at Vienna on the seventeenth of March, 
in the year 180 , and the fifty-ninth year of his age. Severe and 
conscientious towards himself, he was gentle and merciful to 
every one else. Ao monarch ever lived more beloved or died 
more regretted. His whole life was a practical example of his 
own philosophic creed, the mildest form of Stoicism. 

Before he died he ordered his friends and principal officers 
to be brought in. When he saw them about his bed, he told 
his son Commodus to stand before them, and then raising him¬ 
self with some difficulty, he spoke to them as follows: ‘‘I am 
not surprised at your being troubled to see me in this condition. 
Compassion from one man to another is very natural, and 
those objects w T hich strike the sight are always most affecting 
But I persuade myself that your concern upon this occasion 
is somewhat more than ordinary. For the regard I have always 
had for you makes me reasonably expect a suitable return; 
and now opportunity presents itself fair for us; both for me, 
that I have the satisfaction to be sensible that my esteem and 
affection have not been misplaced; for you, to make your 
acknowledgments, and show you are not unmindful of what 
you have received. 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 


283 


You see my son here, who has been educated under you, 
just launching into his youth. This part of life, for a prince 
especially, is like putting to sea in a storm* where, without 
ballast and good pilots, he will be in danger of being over-set 
by his passions and split upon some rock. And therefore, 
since he is going to lose his fathe:-, I hope that relation will be 
supplied and multiplied in you. Pray take care of him in this 
dangerous station, and never let him want good counsel. Put 
him in mind that all the wealth in the world is not sufficient 
to satisfy the caprice and luxury of a tyrant, and that a prince’s 
guards, though never so numerous, are but a slender protection 
without the love of the subjects; that those generally sit long¬ 
est and most secure upon the throne, who reign over the affec¬ 
tions of the people and govern more by goodness than by 
terror. For it is inclination, and not force, that keeps loyalty 
firm and makes subjection easy. In such cases people are 
friends, not flatterers; and never start from their duty except 
provoked by injury and ill-usage. It is true it is a hard matter 
to reign and be regular; and to set bounds to your will when 
your power is almost absolute. If you suggest such things as 
these, and remind him of what he hears now, you will both 
secure an excellent emperor for yourselves and also oblige my 
memory in the highest manner imaginable; this being your 
way to make it immortal.” 

Thus passed from earth the last and most glorious star 
apparent in the Roman firmament. His “Meditations,” from 
which the following selections have been made, are, for good 
mor Is and sound reason, certainly equal to the best parts of 
the Bible, and show a high degree of enlightenment. 

“ Let not your mind be overborne with selfish passion. Be 
not uneasy in the present or afraid of the future. Take care 
always to pursue the business in hand with vigor and applica¬ 
tion ; remember you are a man, and let the action be done with 
all the dignity and advantage of circumstances; let unaffected 
gravity, humanity, freedom and justice shine through it.” 

“ Don’t let accidents disturb you.” 

“Some people are busy and yet do nothing. They fatigue 
and wear themselves out, and yet drive at no point, nor propose 
.any end or action of design.” 


284 


MARCUS AURELIUS. 


“ The extent of human life is but a point. Matter is a per¬ 
petual flux. The faculties of sense and perception are weak 
and unpenetrating; the body slenderly put together and but a 
remove from putrefaction; the soul a rambling sort of a thing. 
Fortune and futurity are not to be guessed at, and fame does 
not always stand upon desert and judgment. In a word, that 
which belongs to the body streams off like a river; and what 
the soul has is but a dream and bubble. Life, to take it rightly, 
is no other than a campaign or course of travels; and posthu¬ 
mous fame has little more in it than silence and obscurity. 
^\ 7 hat is it then that will stick by a man and prove significant? 
Why! nothing but wisdom and philosophy. Now the functions 
of these qualities consist in keeping the mind from injury and 
disgrace; superior to pleasure and pain, free from star's and 
ramblings, without any varnish of dissembling or knavery, and' 
as to happiness, independent of the emotions. Philosophy 
brings the mind to take things as they come. Why should any 
man be concerned as to consequences ? All this is but Nature’s 
method; and Nature never does wrong.” 

“ Reason needs no assistance, but is sufficient for its own 
purposes.” 

“Honesty is a ways the nearest road to success.” 

“A man misbehaves himself towards me. What is that to 
me? The action is his, and therefore let him look to it.” 

“Be always doing something for the good of mankind; and 
let this generosity be your only pleasure.” 

“If any one can convince me of an error, I shall be glad to 
change my opini ns; for truth is my business; and right infor¬ 
mation hurts nobody. He that continues in ignorance and 
mistake is he that receives the mischief.” 

“Whatever drops out of life is caught up somewhere;- for 
the world loses nothing. Why then should the same matter 
that lies quiet in an element crumble in a man ? ” 

“He that considers that Nature has the disposal of things 
will address her in this language: — ‘Give me what thou pleasest 
and take what thou pleasest away: I am contented. ” 

Before closing this sketch it is only proper to state that 
many historians severely criticize the extreme mildness of Mar¬ 
cus Aurelius, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable 


MAEOUS AUEELIUS. 


285 


to eradicate. “His excellent understanding,” says Gibbon, “was 
•often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. 
Artful men, who study the passions of princes and conceal their 
own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanc¬ 
tity, and acquired riches and honors by affecting to despise 
them. His excessive indulgence to his brother, his wife, and 
his son, exceeded the bounds of private virtue, and became a 
public injury, by the example and consequences of their vices.” 
It may be regretted that the good Emperor was not more strict 
with his family. But he really was so good himself that his 
almost perfect virtue naturally blinded him to the stealthy 
vices of those around him. He lived far beyond his age. He 
was industrious, pure, benignant, and merciful; and all his 
failings were but simply those of a great heart, all a-thrill with 
.the highest aspirations and most generous emprises for the 
.good of Humanity. 

The reigns of the Antonines furnish us with, perhaps, the 
very best exhibition of beneficent despotism that the world ever 
witnessed. It is true that the “ one-man-power ” had been 
^exercised before, and that it has been wielded since their time 
with profound wisdom and true patriotism. Indeed, we have 
excellent examples of the same to-day; and perhaps the great 
tendency of modern political and industrial and social life is 
towards the “ fitness of things ” in the assumption an l be- 
.stowal of power as of everything else. The “right man in the 
right place,” at the head of ihe government, the party, the 
corporation, the association, the office, th 1 factory, the work¬ 
shop, and the family, is the great, need and cry of the hour. 
Almost any form of government and type of ru.ers are far bet¬ 
ter than anarchy, which so often passes by ihe name of Free¬ 
dom. And alas! this wild freedom, and its counterpart —licen¬ 
tious tyranny — were destined soon to follow the just and humane 
rule of the Antonines; and those dreadful coming events must 
have at times cast their shadows before, and embittered that 
noblest of human enjoyments—imperial delight in the happi¬ 
ness of a peaceful and industrious people. 


286 


GALEN. 


GALEN. 


This celebrated Greek physician, medical writer, and pagan 
philosopher, was born at Pergamtis in Mysia, in the year 131. 
He was instructed in anatomy by Satyrus, and studied the Pla¬ 
tonic and Peripatetic philosophies. In his youth, in order to 
perfect his education at the best schools, he visited several 
foreign countries and studied in the most learned seminaries of 
Greece and Egypt. At the age of thirty-four he removed to 
Rome, where he acquired great celebrity as a practitioner of 
medicine and surgery. Many, astonished at his cures, attributed 
them to magic. He obtained the confidence of Marcus Aurelius, 
who appointed him physician to Commodus, the heir of the 
empire. He aiso lectured on anatomy in Rome. Towards the 
end of his life, having become the object of the jealousy of the 
old-established physicians, he retired to his native place, whence, 
however, he was recalled by the Emperor to Rome again, where 
he passed the remainder of his days. It is said that he wrote 
three hundred volumes, the greatest number of which were 
burnt in the Temple of Peace at Rome, where they had been 
deposited. All his works were written in Greek. Of some of 
them, only Latin versions have come down to us. In all, above 
eighty of his works are extant. 

He is the only one among all the ancients who has given 
us a complete system (whatever may be its defects) of medicine. 
He rejected the various medical systems which were in vogue 
in his time, and formed a new eclectic school, which main¬ 
tained its authority for thirteen centuries. Indeed, he was 
regarded as an oracle by the Arabs and Europeans until the 
fifteenth century. He was second only in merit as a physician 
to Hippocrates; and to these two medical philosophers of the 
ancients, the moderns are indebted for many valuable discov¬ 
eries. He particularly excelled in anatomy, of which he was a 
very skilful and learned professor; and on this knowledge his 
soundest and most lasting medical fame rests. But, in common 


GALEN. 


28? 


with all the ancient professors of medicine, he did not know- 
enough to keep him from framing metaphysical and intuitional 
theories of disease! And as his followers received his dicta as 
authoritative decisions, he was unwittingly a cause of consider¬ 
ably preventing the progress in this most important science, 
which otherwise he might have commenced. 

Among Galen’s works are many able treatises on ethics, 
logic, and philosophy. In one of his works he strongly stigma¬ 
tizes the Christians for obstinacy; and in another censures them 
for believing without proof—a species of credulity which has 
been rampant among them ever since. 

Notwithstanding the public burning of his works at Bale in 
the year 1526, by that prince of Christian charlatans — Philippus 
Aureolus Theophrates Bombastus Paracelsus — Galen, “though 
dead, yet speaketh,” and very strongly and wisely too, as 
physician, philosopher, logician, moralist, and just and truthful 
exposer of the follies and vices of our much-vaunted primitive^ 
Christianity. 

In these days of almost perfect surgery, wise hygiene, and 
growingly rational therapeutics, we are very apt to lose sight 
of the immense debt which our age owes to such princes among- 
primitive “medicine-men” as iEsculapius, Hippocrates and 
Galen. It is surprising to notice how acute they were in their 
diagnoses, watchings of sym toms, and common-sense treat¬ 
ment. They relied more on careful nursing, or in other words,, 
assisting Nature, than on all other appliances put together. Let. 
it always be remembered that it was the intellectual degrada¬ 
tion of the Dark and Middle Ages —the golden age of the 
Christian superstition — that furnished us with the foolish search 
after the impossible “elixir of life,” and the cruel and absurd 
method of treating disease which obtained until comparatively 
recent times, but that To-day “progressively returns” to the. 
method of Nature as interpreted by her ancient healing oracles,, 
pagan though they be, and says: “Lend the physical system a 
helping hand, and if cure is possible, it will cure itself. . . . 

Meddle not with the recuperative forces of the body —the 
regenerating power of the organic elements of the human con¬ 
stitution.” 


288 


CELSUS. 


CELSUS. 


Oelsus is chiefly known as the first formidable foe of Chris¬ 
tianity. His great work was called the “True Word.” Not a 
^chapter of this production is now extant, the Christian Church 
always having taken good care to destroy such writings of its 
adversaries as could not be answered. He was regarded as so 
powerful an opponent that the ablest Fathers of the Church 
were pitted against him. 

The charge of Celsus against the Christians of misquoting 
their Scriptures, induced Origen to undertake the difficult task 
of comparing all the different versions of the Old Testament, 
and writing a rep.y. The only portions of Celsus’ writings 
which have been preserved are those passages transcribed by 
Origen in reply to them. All the standard Christian authorities 
have recognized the learning and controversial ability of Celsus, 
and have done homage to his genius as a writer. He undoubt¬ 
edly spread greater consternation through Christendom than 
any other writer of the first two centuries. 

But little is certainly known of his personal history. Neither 
the place nor the date of his birth can be ascertained. He is 
generally supposed to have lived in the time of Adrian and 
Antoninus Pius, near the close of the second century. The date 
of his book is approximately put at 176 A. C. 

Origen endeavored to make him out an Epicurean, as great 
prejudice existed even among the heathen against this school of 
philosophy, which denied, or left as open questions, the exist¬ 
ence of a God, and the eternity of the soul. But it conclu¬ 
sively appears from passages of Celsus, quoted by Origen, that 
he belonged rather to the Eclectics, and Origen is obliged to 
admit in several passages that the views of Celsus were not 
Epicurean, but Platonic. It appears that Christians of the 
earlier ages were as prompt to excite prejudice against their 
opponents by false accusations as those of later times. 


CELSUS. 


289 


Origen’s answer to Celsus is composed of eight books. He 
^extracts short passages from the work of Celsus, and then 
undertakes to answer them. Celsus’ attacks were mostly in a 
sarcastic vein. He especially scoffed at the idea that the second 
person in the Christian Godhead was bom of a woman, walked 
about in human form, and was subject to human infirmities. 

He charged Christians with believing in more than one God; 
for they attribu ed to Christ, as the maker of heaven and earth, 
more power than was ever imputed to the pagan divinities, 
Apollo or Mars. The idea that the world was made for man, 
and that God watched over the well-being of every individual, 
was regarded by him as mere arrogant assumption. He says: 

“It is not for man, any more than for lions and eagles, that 
everything in the world has been created. It was in order that 
the world, as the work of God, might present a perfect whole. 
This world never becomes any worse. God does not return to 
it after a long interval. He is as little angry with man as he 
is with apes and flies. The Universe has been provided, once 
for all, with all the powers necessary to its preservation, and 
for developing itself after the same laws. God has not, like a 
human architect, so executed his work, that at some future 
period it would need to be repaired.” 

He despised Christianity as a blind faith, that shunned the 
light of reason. He uses this language: “They are forever 
repeating, Do not examine. Only believe, and thy faith will 
make thee blessed. Wisdom is a bad thing in life; foolishness 
is to be preferred.” 

From the quoted passages in the work of Origen, we are 
able to form a clear concept 1 on of the religious opinions of 
Celsus. Like the Platonists he acknowledged one only, eternal, 
spiritual God, who cannot be brought into union with impure 
matter, the world. 

“God,” says he, has not made man in his image, as Chris¬ 
tians affirm; for God has not either the appearance of a man, 
nor indeed any visible form.” 

Again he says, regarding the Christian doctrine of incarna¬ 
tion: “I will appeal to that which has been held as true in all 
ages —that God is good, beautiful, blessed, and possesses in 
himself all perfections. If he came down among men, he must 


290 


CELSUS. 


have altered his nature; from a good God, he must have 1 
become bad; from beautiful, ugly; from blessed, unhappy; and. 
his perfect being would have become one of imperfection. Who 
can tolerate such a change ? Only transitory things alter their 
conditions; the intransitory remain ever the same. Therefore 
it is impossible to conceive that God can have been transformed 
in that manner.” 

“If the Christians only honored one God,” says he, “ then 
the weapons of their controversy with others would not be so 
weak; but they show to a man who appeared not long ago, an 
exaggerated honor, and are of opinion that they are not offend¬ 
ing the Godhead, when they show to one of his servants the 
same reverence that they pay to God himself.” 

In Celsus’ first book he introduces a Jew, who thus tells the 
story of Jesus’ life, as extracted by Origen: “The Jew addresses 
Jesus, and finds much fault. In the first place he charges him 
with having falsely proclaimed himself to be the son of a virgin; 
afterwards he says that Jesus was born in a poor Jewish vil¬ 
lage, and that his mother was a poor woman of the country, 
who supported herself with spinning and needle-work; that she 
was cast off by her betrothed, a carpenter; and that after she 
was thus rejected by her husband, she wandered about in dis¬ 
grace and misery till she secretly gave birth to Jesus. Jesus 
himself was obliged from poverty and necessity to go down as 
servant into Egypt, where he learnt some of the secret sciences 
which are in high regard among the Egyptians; and he placed 
such confidence in these sciences, that on his return to his 
native land he gave himself out to be God.” 

Origen adds; “The carpenter, as the Jew of Celsus declares, 
who was betrothed to Mary, put the mother of Jesus from him, 
because she had broken faith with him, in favor of a soldier 
named Panther.” 

The story current in Celsus’ time, viz: that Jesus was the 
result of an illicit intercourse between the wife of the carpenter 
Joseph and a Roman soldier named Panther, who served in the 
fourteenth legion, is considerably confirmed by the fact that 
the name of Panther was given in the genealogy of Jesus by 
the Christians in the fourth century. St. Epiphanius, who wrote 
against heresies at the end of the fourth century, was forced ta 


CELSUS, 


291 


put the name of “Jacob, called Panther,” into the pedigree of 
Jesus. 

Celsus is thus quoted by Origen, as jeering at the ignorance 
of the Christian preachers: “ You may see weavers, tailors, 
fullers, and the most illiterate and rustic fellows, who dare not 
speak a word before wise men, when they can get a company 
of children and silly women together, set up to teach strange 
paradoxes among them.” 

The words of Jesus, “I thank thee, O Father, that thou hast 
concealed these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes,” Celsus construes thus: “This is 
one of their rules: Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent 
come among us; but if they be unlearned, or a child, or an 
idiot, let him freely come. So they openly declare that none 
but the ignorant, and those devoid of understanding, slaves, 
women, and children, are fit disciples for the God they worship.” 

The above extracts are sufficient to indicate the force and 
satire of the first great writer who entered the lists against the 
Christians. Celsus appears to have been to the second century 
what Yoltaire was to the eighteenth. That his morals were 
good and his learning great, has never been gainsaid by his 
Christian adversaries. And many learned Christians have 
regretted the fanatical zeal that prompted the suppression of his 
writings. Celsus stands conspicuously forth as the earliest cham¬ 
pion of reason against the absurd claims of primitive Christian¬ 
ity; and as the first bold opponent who provoked the hostility 
of the Church, and the author of a work which was deemed 
unanswerable save by suppression, he rightfully claims a place 
in our muster-roll of Infidels. 


292 


PORPH YRY. 


PORPHYRY. 

It was the third century of the Christian era. The great 
Roman religious world was tottering on its old foundations, 
and the groundwork for the institution of Jesus Christ had not 
been completed. The gods of the nations had lost their oracles, 
and the illusions of classic superstitions were fading from the 
convictions of mankind. The faith of the generations could no 
longer tabernacle in the olden forms, and the Church of West¬ 
ern Christendom had commenced its work of usurpation. It 
was the age of Alexander Severus, the amiable, just, and 
humane. His reign illuminated the surrounding darkness like 
a beam of light. It was the age of the Christian Fathers. 

In contemplating the history of this period, the mind is 
carried back along the pathway of the ages to the time when 
the smoke of sacrifice still arose in the Pantheon, and when the 
tiger and the leopard bounded in the amphitheatre. It Avas the 
period of the decline of heathen Rome, and the formation of a 
new church beside the throne of the Cmsars. The name of the 
son of Mary would ere long be proclaimed on the Seven Hills, 
and a pastor on the banks of the Tiber would rule the Roman 
world. Porphyry, the great anti-Christian of the early ages 
appeared. 

This celebrated Neo-Platonic philosopher was born at Bashan, 
in Syria, in 233 A. C. His original name was Malchus, which 
was also the name of his father, who was a Syro-Phoenician. 
This name signified “purple,” or a man “in purple,” the 
Hebrew and Syriac name for king. While he was yet a boy he 
was placed under the instruction of Origen, who was then 
living at Caesarea in Palestine. Under this famous Christian 
preceptor he applied himself to the study of literature and 
philosophy. It is uncertain how long he remained the pupil of 
Origen. He afterwards went to Athens, where for some time he 
studied rhetoric under Longinus, the celebrated critic and 
philosopher. This famous master changed his Syrian name. 


PORPHYRY. 


293 


Malchus, which was not pleasing to Christian ears, into .that of 
Porphyrius, which answers to it in Greek. To this able teacher 
Porphyry was undoubtedly indebted for that elegance of style 
and erudition which appear in his writings. 

We find him next at Rome, where, at the age of thirty, he 
became a scholar of Plotinus, whose life he has written, in 
which he has stated many particulars concerning himself. 
Here Porphyry continued for six years a diligent student of the 
Eclectic system of philosophy, and became so entirely attache l 
to his master, and so perfectly acquainted with his doctrine, 
that Plotinus esteemed him one of the greatest ornaments of 
his school, and frequently employed him in refuting the objec¬ 
tions of his opponents, and in explaining to his younger pupils 
the more difficult parts of his writings. He also confided to 
him the charge of compiling and correcting his works. 

The fanatical spirit of the philosophy to which Porphyry at 
this time was attached, together with his natural pre-disposi¬ 
tion to melancholy, led him to form a resolution of putting an 
end to his life, thereby proposing, in accordance with the 
Platonic teaching, to release his soul from the wretched prison 
of the body. He was, however, dissuaded from this mad design 
by his master, who sought to divert his melancholy by per¬ 
suading him to take a journey to Sicily. He followed his 
master’s advice, visiting his friend Proclus at Lilybseum, in 
Sicily, where he recovered the vigor and tranquillity of his 
mind. 

According to Eusebius and Jerome, it was there that he 
composed those famous fifteen books against the Christians, 
which, for the name and authority of the man, and for the 
force and learning with which they were written, were deemed 
so effective as to be suppressed by particular edicts under the 
reigns of Constantine and Theodosius. About a century later 
these books were ordered to be publicly burnt by the Emperor 
Theodosius the Elder. 

The whole list of Porphyry’s works, as given by Eabricus, 
amounts to sixty-one. Forty-three of these have been lost. 
They were all written in elegant Greek, in a simple and grace¬ 
ful style, and upon a great variety of subjects. Some have sur¬ 
mised that these books are still extant, and secretly preserved 


294 


PORPHYRY. 


in the Duke of Tuscany’s library, but there is little doubt that 
they were destroyed by the intolerant followers of Christ. 
Even many learned Christians have regretted the mistaken zeal 
of their early brethren in suppressing the writings of Porphyry, 
being firmly persuaded that, notwithstanding their powerful 
assault against Christ and his religion, they contained many 
admirable things which would have been found worthy of pres¬ 
ervation. His learning, the splendor of his diction, and the 
variety of his reading, would have rendered them the most val¬ 
uable production* of those early ages. 

His “Life of Pythagoras,” which is but a fragment, was 
published at Amsterdam in 1707. He wrote a work on absti¬ 
nence from meat, dedicated to one of his disciples named Fir- 
mus, who, it is said, turned Christian in order to have the 
liberty of eating meat and drinking wine. He shows Firmus 
that in abstaining from meat and strong liquors the health of 
the soul and body is preserved, and that those who abstain from 
animal food live longer and more innocently. This book proves 
that among the early antagonists of Christianity were philoso¬ 
phers of the most austere temperance and virtue. Although the 
Essenians sometimes indulged in meat, Porphyry was filled with 
the most unreserved veneration for them, and accords them a 
very fine eulogium. In truth, he was for whoever was the wor¬ 
thiest and most virtuous, whether Essenians, Stoics, Pagans or 
Christians. Rising above all rival religions and philosophers, 
Porphyry sought to conciliate whatever was good and true in 
each. He is described by the learned Neander as “a man of 
noble spirit, united with profound intellectual attainments; a 
man of the East, in whom the Oriental basis of character had 
been completely fused with the elements of Grecian culture. 

Porphyry inculcated the highest standard of morals, and the 
purity of his life is admitted even by his enemies. He lived 
se] arate from his wife, and was in all respects as abstemious as 
an anchorite. 

Christianity was then making rapid progress. The whole 
wide empire was ere long to be brought under its baleful blight, 
and all the world’s bright lights were to go out in the long night 
of the Dark Ages. Porphyry, the head of the Alexandrian 
school, and the great champion of New Platonism, then rose up 


PORPHYRY. 


295 


•as the most powerful barrier to the encroachments of the new 
religion that would appear for twelve hundred years. He was 
undoubtedly the most formidable antagonist with whom the 
Christian Church had to contend until the eighteenth century. 

He familiarized himself with the Septuagint and all the 
Christian writings, for the express purpose of refuting them. 
In his work composed for that purpose, he pointed out the dis¬ 
crepancies in the Scriptures, and ridiculed the interpretations 
of the Fathers. Little is accurately known concerning his 
books against Christianity except from the quotations given by 
the Fathers, who seldom allude to his name without expressions 
of strong dislike. Their importance is shown by the fact that 
they received more than thirty answers, and that they were all 
zealously destroyed as soon as Christianity became the dominant 
religion. From the few fragments of his writings which have 
been preserved, the following extracts have been selected: 

“ That man is not so much of an Atheist who neglects to 
worship the statues of the gods, as he is who transfers to God 
the opinions of the multitude.” 

“ The philosopher ought to destroy bad usages, not submit 
to them. He owes obedience to the laws only when they are 
not contrary to a superior law, which he carries within him. 
We have seen Syrians, Jews, and Egyptians, brave death rather 
than transgress a religious precept; and is a philosopher, after 
having passed his life in proving that death is no evil, is he to 
hesitate between peril and his duty ? ” 

“The philosopher carries within him, as a sacred deposit, an 
unwritten, but most divine law.” 

“ It is by purity of heart, and the sacrifice of ourselves that 
we truly honor Divine Beings. As for pompous sacrifices, to 
sustain and augment piety, they, on the contrary, only increase 
superstition, and spread abroad the deplorable idea that we can 
corrupt the justice of the gods by presents.” 

Porphyry died in the year 304 at the age of seventy-one. 


296 


JULIAN. 


JULIAN. 


Flavius Claudius Julianus, commonly called “the Apostate,”* 
in the year 354, and at the age of thirty-two, acquired the 
undisputed possession of the great Roman Empire. He was 
the nephew of the cruel Christian Constantine, and at the age 
of six years was left an orphan in the hands of the murderers 
of his family. He narrowly escaped the carnage which proved 
fatal to his father, his brother, and seven of his cousins. His 
life was for a long time threatened by the barbarous Emperor 
Constantius. The Constantine family have never been sur¬ 
passed in a tiger-thirst for blood by any dynasty known in 
history. 

At an early age Julian’s education was intrusted to Christian 
preceptors. His ecclesiastical tutor was Eusebius, bishop of 
Nicodemia; and until the twentieth year of his age, he received 
instruction better suited to a saint than a prince. His perse¬ 
cuting uncle forced him to be a monk, and to perform the 
office of reader in the church. But in secret he was of the 
ancient religion of Rome, and in communication with the most 
illustrious philosophers of the age. Julian was never truly a 
Christian, and only professedly one to escape assassination. 
Therefore, he cannot properly be called an apostate. His 
independent genius disdained the authority of the haughty 
ministers of the church who sought to prescribe the rigid form¬ 
ulary of his thoughts, words and actions. It is quite unlikely 
that he would really accept the religion of those by whose 
implacable hands had been inflicted all the evils he had suf¬ 
fered in his tender years. He lived amidst the shameful scan¬ 
dals of the Arian controversy. He had been a witness of the 
fierce fights of the belligerent bishops over their incomprehensi¬ 
ble, conflicting creeds, and his prejudices had been strengthened 
by the conduct of Christians who appeared actuated by the 
basest motives. He had ever entertained an invincible aversion 
to the doctrines of Christianity. Hence, we repeat, he was not 
really an apostate, since he never was truly a Christian. 


JULIAN. 


297 


The religion of Jesus Christ, spread by fear, and force, and 
fraud, was the state religion of Kome. Paganism was viewed 
with a hostile eye by the Emperor. The life of Julian was- 
already threatened. His family had perished by the hands of 
Christian murderers. The religion which he secretly enter¬ 
tained was prohibited under a despotic government. As the 
presumptive heir of the empire, he had been consecrated to 
Christianity at an early age by the sacrament of baptism. At 
a 1 iter period of his life he was under the obligation of pub¬ 
licly assisting at the solemn festivals of the Church. Had he 
hesitated in so doing, his death alone would have appeased the 
apprehensions of the Christians. His safety demanded that he 
should dissemble his religion. Instead of aspiring to the glory 
of martyrdom, he embraced the dictates of reason, and obeyed 
the laws of prudence and necessity, by joining in the public 
worship of a sect which he inwardly despised. 

As soon as his safety permitted, however, he declared his 
real religion, which he had dissembled for ten years. As soon 
as he obtained the mastery of the empire he surprised the^ 
world by an edict which extended the benefits of a free and 
equal toleration to all the inhabitants of Home. The Pagans 
were permitted to reopen their temples, and were at once eman¬ 
cipated from the cruel and vexatious laws which they had 
experienced under the Christian Emperor. The Christian sect¬ 
aries had persecuted one another, and had filled all the East 
with Christian conflict. Julian extended equal toleration to 
each of the hostile factions. And while he re-established the 
anc'ent religion of the empire, he recalled from exile the 
bishops and clergy who had been banished by an Arian mon¬ 
arch, as well as the Donatists, Novatians, Macedonians, and 
nil who had been the victims of Christian intolerance, and 
s ored to them their respective churches. The only hardship 
hich he inflicted cn the Christians, was to deprive them of 
> power of persecuting their fellow-subjects, whom they 
regarded as accursed heretics and idolaters. 

In restoring the priesthood of the ancient religion, he incul¬ 
cated th * sentiment that their sacred functions required immac¬ 
ulate purity, both of mind and body, and that it was incumbent 
on them to become models of decency and virtue for the rest. 


298 


JULIAN. 


of their fellow citizens. He directed that the priests should 
never be seen in theatres and taverns, and that their conversa¬ 
tion should be chaste, their diet temperate, and their friends 
of honorable reputation. Says Gibbon: “In the religion which 
he had adopted, piety and learning were almost synonymous; 
and a crowd of poets, of rhetoricians, and of philosophers, 
hastened to the imperial court to occupy the vacant places of 
the bishops, who had seduced the credulity of Constantius.” 
While disdaining the yoke of the gospel, the belief which 
Julian adopted was of the grandest proportions. It embraced 
the sublimest principles of natural religion. He adored the 
Eternal Cause of the Universe. He believed that every being 
derived its existence from the Supreme First Cause, and pos- 
essed the inherent gift of immortality. He accepted the invar¬ 
iable order of the sun, moon and stars, as a proof of their 
eternal duration; and their eternity was a sufficient evidence 
that they were the workmanship of an Omnipotent Deity. The 
visible was the type of the invisible world. The celestial bodies 
were the manifestations of a divine spirit; and “ the sun, whose 
genial influence pervades and sustains the Universe, justly 
claimed the adoration of mankind, as the bright Logos, the 
lively, the rational, the beneficent image of the intellectual 
Father.” 

Such was the religious belief of Julian, so unjustly surnamed 
“the Apostate.” The world now acknowledges him to have been 
a hero, a great and a wise man. As an emperor, he rendered 
strict justice to his subjects. His grand aim was to extirpate 
persecution and intolerance. Unprejudiced historians concede 
him to have been virtuous and modest in his manners, and 
liberal in his disposition. During his brief reign of two years 
the luxurious and indecent practices of the court of Constanti¬ 
nople were abolished. The leading traits of his character were 
magnanimity, justice, and mercy. He was the most liberaL 
patron of learning and philosophy that ever swayed the impe¬ 
rial scepter over the Roman Empire. And when justice shall be 
rendered to his memory, he will be awarded a place in Roman 
history, equaled by none save Antoninus Pius and Marcus 
Aurelius. 


♦ 


HIEROCLES. 


299 


HIEROCLES. 

About the year 300, an able attack was made on the Christian 
superstition by Hierocles, the president of Bithynia and after¬ 
wards prefect of Alexandria. He wrote two books against Chris¬ 
tianity, entitled “Sincere Discourses to the Christians,” in 
which he maintains that the “Scripture” is full of contradic¬ 
tions. His more positive line of argument was more specific 
than those of Lucian, Celsus, and Porphyry, being directed 
against the evidence which was derived by Christians for the 
truth of their religion from the character and miraculous works 
of Christ; and this he did by presenting the character of Apol¬ 
lonius of Tyana as a rival to Jesus in piety and miraculous 
power. For this purpose Hierocles partly used Philostratus’s 
memoir for the purpose of instituting the comparison. 

The sceptic who referred religious phenomena to fanaticism 
would avail himself of the comparison as a satisfactory account 
of the origin of Christianity; while others would adopt the 
same view as Hierocles, and deprive the Christian miracles of 
the force of evidence. The work of Hierocles is lost, but an out¬ 
line of its argument, with extracts, remains in a reply written 
to a portion of it by Eusebius — the great Ecclesiastical Humbug 
—who therein incessantly harps on the “necessity of faith” in 
the miracles of Jesus, and of contemptuous scepticism as to 
those of Apollonius! Compare this with the work of Hierocles, 
which Christian scholars admit was couched in a spirit of fair¬ 
ness. _ 

We have thus se n that from the very introduction of Chris¬ 
tianity by the school of Alexandria, all along the first two 
centuries, the new superstition was ably attacked on all points 
by learned, and honest antagonists. The Christians mostly 
replied by invectives or pious frauds. And these charges of 
fraud and forgery made against them have lived up to the 
present time. Like Banquo’s ghost, they will not down! 



300 


HIEROCLES. 


Among the most noted of these forgeries are the following,, 
many of them so worded as to dove-tail very naturally and 
unpretentiously into the Gospel narratives:— 

Phlegon is made to say, ‘‘In the fourth year of the 202nd 
Olympiad, there was an eclipse of the sun greater than any ever 
known before; and it was night at the sixth hour of the day, 
so that even the stars appeared, and there was a great earth¬ 
quake in Bithynia, that overthrew several houses in Nice.” 

To Macrobius has been falsely ascribed this passageWhen 
Augustus had heard that among the children in Syria, whom 
Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered to be slain under two 
years of age, his own son was also killed, he remarked that it 
was beter to be Herod’s hog than his son.” 

Publius Lentulus, the supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate 
in the Province of Judea, was fabled to have written the follow¬ 
ing, a printed copy of which, with a cheap colored wood-cut of 
Jesus, corresponding to the description in the text, is often 
hawked about the country, among our ignorant Catholic and 
Protestant population, and read and swallowed with avidity:— 
“ Lentulus, Prefect of Jerusalem, to the Senate and people of 
Borne, greeting;—At this time, there hath appeared, and still 
lives, a man endued with great powers, whose name is Jesus 
Christ. Men say that he is a mighty prophet; his disciples call 
him the Son of God. He restores the dead to life, and heals the 
sick from all sorts of ailments and diseases. He is a man of 
stature, proportionately tall, and his cast of countenance has a 
certain severity in it, so full of effect, as to induce beholders to 
love and yet still to fear him. His hair is of the color of wine, 
as far as the bottom of his ears, without radiation and straight, 
and from the lower part of his ears, it is curled down to his 
shou ders, and bright, and hangs downwards from his shoulders; 
at the top of his head it is parted after the fashion of the 
Nazarenes. His forehead is smooth and clean, and his face 
without a pimple, adorned by a certain temperate redness; his 
countenance gentlemanlike and agreeable, his nose and mouth 
nothing amiss; his beard thick, and divided into two bunches 
of the same color as his hair; his eyes blue and uncommonly 
bright. In reproving and rebuking he is formidable; in teach¬ 
ing and exhorting, of a bland and agreeable tongue. He has a 


HIEROCLES. 


301 


'wonderful grace of person united with seriousness. No one has 
ever seen him smile, but weeping indeed they have. He hath a 
lengthened stature of body; his hands are straight and turned 
up, and his arms are delectable; in speaking, deliberate and 
slow, and sparing of his conversation; —the most beautiful 
of countenance among the sons of men.” 

In reference to this vile and outrageous forgery, it has been 
w y ell said: “All our pictures of the handsome Jew present the 
closest family likeness to the Indian Christna, and the Greek 
and Roman Apollo. Had the Jewish text been respected, he 
would rather have been exhibited as hideously ugly; ‘ his vis¬ 
age was so marred, more than any man, and his form more than 
the sons of men.’—Isaiah lii. 14. But this would have spoiled 
the ornaments of the Church, as well as of the theatre, and 
been fatal to the faith of the fair sex! Who could have believed 
in an ugly son of God ?” 

Indeed, in all the pictures and portraits of Christ by the early 
* Christians , Jesus is uniformly represented as being black and 
woolly-haired, with the peculiar countenance and thick protrud¬ 
ing lips of a negro. The Jesus “of Loretto ” is evidently a 
bouncing young African. And we all know what an important 
part Africa played in the introduction and propagandism of 
Christianity. As Buddhism originated among Caucasians but 
passed over and found its greatest welcome and most congen al 
home among Turanian nations; it may well be that Chris.ianity 
originated among Africans, but immediately became the almost 
exclusive possession of Caucasians. And is n t Solomon’s dec¬ 
laration: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusa¬ 
lem!” almost always cited by Christian preachers and commen¬ 
tators as referring to Christ? 

Another vile forgery, which is often peddled around even 
now-a-days, relates “how that Abgarus, governor of Edessa, 
sent h's letter unto Jesus, and withal a certain painter, who 
might view him well, and bring unto him back again the lively 
picture of Jesus. But the painter not being able, for the glori¬ 
ous brightness of his gracious countenance, to look at him so 
•steadily as to catch his likeness, our Savior himself took an 
handkerchief, and laid it on his divine and lovely face, and by 
wiping of his face, his picture became impressed on the hand - 


302 


HIEROCLES. 


kerchief , which he sent to Abgarus.” This is the famous “Ver¬ 
onica handkerchief,” to which the Catholic faithful have been 
praying as follows : “ Hail Holy Face impressed on cloth! Purge, 
us from every spot of vice, and join us to the society of the 
blessed; O blessed Figure!” 

Still another pious fraud. The third collection of “Sibylline 
oracles ” bought by Tarquin has come down to us in eight 
books. This collection is the fruit of the unscrupulous piety of 
some “Platonic Christians, more zealous than clever, who in 
composing it, thought to lend arms to the Christian religion, and 
to put those who defended it in a situation to combat Paganism 
with the greatest advantage. In the time of Celsus, sibyls had 
already some credit among the Christians. In time these sibyl¬ 
line prophecies were commonly made use of in works of con¬ 
troversy with much more confidence than by the pagans them¬ 
selves, [the sibyls being originally pagan oracles,] who, acknowl¬ 
edging these women to be inspired, confined themselves to saying 
that the Christians had falsified their writings. Finally, it was 
from a poem of the sibyl of Cumea that the principal dogmas 
of Christianity were taken. Constantine [the imperial inaugu- 
rator of the Christian religion], in the discourse which he pro¬ 
nounced before the assembly of the saints, shows that the fourth 
Eclogue of Virgil — which is made up of utterances of the Cu- 
mean witch — is only a prophetical description of the Savior,’’ 
and declares that “he saw in this poem the miracle of the birth 
of Jesus of a virgin; the abolition of sin by the preaching of' 
the Gospel; the abolition of punishment by the grace of the 
Redeemer; the old serpent overthrown; the mortal venom with 
which he poisoned human nature entirely deadened; in a word, 
Jesus Christ announced under the great character of the Son of 
God”! Thus sibyiline Paganism was obviously the parent of 
imperial Christianity! And, later, “St. Augustine, like hosts of 
others, was persuaded of it, and pretended that the lines of 
Virgil can only be applied to Jesus Christ.” And, as this was- 
“the general opinion of the early Church,” so, many modern 
theologians still maintain the same opinion, as against the clear 
voice of honest criticism, historical and literary. Truly 


“The force of‘credence’can no further go.” 


HIEIiOCLES, 


303 


Another apocryphal cheat and imposition, which our imme- i 
diate grandfathers were required to believe, was “that Pontius? 
Pilate informed the Emperor of the unjust sentence of death) 
which he had pronounced against an innocent, and as it 
appeared, a divine person; and that, without acquiring the 
merit of martyrdom, he exposed himself to the danger of it; 
that Tiberius, who avowed his contempt for all religion, 
immediately conceived the design of placing the Jewish Mes¬ 
siah among the gods of Rome; that his servile senate ventured 
to disobey the commands of their master; that Tiberius, instead 
of resenting their refusal, contented himself with protecting the 
Christians from the severity of the laws, many years before 
there were any laws in existence that could operate against 
them; and lastly that the memory of this extraordinary trans¬ 
action was preserved in the most public and authentic records, 
only those public and authentic records were never seen nor 
heard of by any of the persons to whose keeping they were 
entrusted, escaped the knowledge and research of the historians 
of Greece and Rome, and were only visible to the eyes of an 
African priest, who composed his apology one hundred and sixty 
years after the death of Tiberius! ” 

It seems there are five of these suppositious “ Epistles ” or 
“Relations” of Pilate, in one of which he is made to say: 
“There was darkness over the whole earth, the sun in the mid¬ 
dle of the day being darkened, and the stars appearing, among 
whose lights the moon appeared not, but as if turned into 
blood, it left its shining.” And moreover, “early in the morn¬ 
ing of the first of the Sabbath, the resurrection of Christ was 
announced by a display of the most astonishing and surprising 
feats of divine Omnipotence ever performed. At the third hour 
of the night, the sun broke forth into such splendor as was 
never before seen, and the heaven became enlightened seven 
times more than any other day.” “And the light ceased not to 
shine all that night.” But the last and sublimest part of the 
exhibition, as exemplifying the principle of poetical justice, and 
making a proper finale to the scene was that “an instantaneous 
chasm took place, and the earth opened and swallowed up ad 
the unbelieving Jews; their temples and synagogues all van¬ 
ished away; and the next morning there was not so much as 


HIEROCLES. 


204 

one of them left in all Jerusalem; and the Koman soldiers who 
had kept the sepulchre ran stark-staring mad. ” What a ghastly 
hoax and bloodthirsty lie! 

But poor Pilate! notwithstanding these fine and edifying tes¬ 
timonies of his to the innocent manhood and terrible divinity 
of Jesus, yet he was not happy! Indeed, from all that we 
learn, he fared very ill—a victim of Christ’s basest ingratitude; 
lor we learn that soon after these transactions of Pilate men¬ 
tioned in the gospels, he was banished to Yienne in Gaul, 
where he killed himself 38 A. C. Indeed, Mont Pilat, one of 
the loftiest mountains of the Cevennes, is connected by a still 
lingering tradition with the terrible tragedy of his death. 

But sad as was Pilate’s unmerited fate, it was as n thing to 
that of the poor miscreant Ahasuerus, who, “according to one 
account, was a carpenter; and as our Savior passed his work¬ 
shop on his way to execution, the soldiers begged that he 
might be allowed to enter for a few moments to rest; but he 
not only refused, but insulted him. By another account, he 
was a shoemaker sitting at his bench as our Savior passed to 
Calvary, and not only refused to allow him to rest for a few 
moments, but drove him away with curses.” But whether h ■ 
was a carpenter or a shoemaker, “Jesus calmly replied: ‘Thou 
shalt wander on the earth till I return.’ Driven by fear and 
remorse, he has since wandered, according to the command of 
our Lord, from place to place, and has in vain sought death 
amid all the greatest dangers and calamities to whicii human 
life is subject.” It is true this was not a very early legend, 
but it obtained great currency in the Mi Idle Ages. In its first 
form, the Wanderer is called Cartaphilus, and is said to have 
been a servant of Pilate. Poor Pilate once more! 

Still another forgery is that passage attributed to Arnobius, 
where, as evidence of the “uncommon darkness and other sur¬ 
prising events at the time of our Lord’s passion and death,” it 
is said that “when he had put off his body, which he carried 
about in a little part of himself, after he suffered himself to be 
seen, and that it should be known of what size he was, all the 
elements of the world, terrified at the strangeness of what had 
happened, were put out of order; the earth shook and trem¬ 
bled; the sea was completely poured out from its lowest bot- 


HIEROCLES. 


305 


tom; the whole atmosphere was rolled up into balls of dark¬ 
ness; the fiery orb of the sun itself caught cold and shivered V* 

The forged interpolations in Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny, 
have already been noticed. Time, space, and patience will not 
allow more than the mere mention of the base forged “inscrip¬ 
tions to Nero, to Diocletian, and to Maximinian. 

As an offset to these outrageous fabrications, it is a great 
surprise to ail historical students to find that no reference 
whatever has been made to Christ'ans or Christianity by the 
following ancient writers, whose works, still remaining, were 
written as follows: Philo, who wrote about 40 A. C.; Josephus, 
about 40; Seneca, about 69; Pliny the Elder, about 79; Diogenes 
Laertius, about 79; the Geographers Pausanias and Mela, about 
the same year; and the Historians Q. Curtius Rufus, Lucius A. 
Elorus, Apnianus, Justinus, and JElianus, who wrote between 79 
and 141. Besides these we have at least seven well-known poets 
who wrote between 63 and 90, who never alluded to the Chris¬ 
tians. And the noted orator Quintilian, who was born between 
40 and 50, and wroter about 100, as well as the famous astronomer 
and geographer Ptolemy, who wrote about 130, never mentioned 
them in their copious works. And in the whole body of Roman 
law there is not extant one word about the Christians. 

Of the other authors of this era, those who have alluded, or 
are supposed by writers on Christian evidences to have alluded 
•to the Christians, are the following: Pliny the Younger, Sueton¬ 
ius, Tacitus, the Emperors Adrian and Marcus Aurelius, Lucian, 
•Celsus, Prusaeus, Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Arrian, Apuleius, 
and iElius Aristides; and these, without a single exception, 
speak*in very derogatory terms of the sect. The reader is 
already acquainted with what six of the above witnesses have 
testified about it. Of the rest, the Emperor Adrian wrote to 
his brother-in-law, in 134, as follows: “Egypt, which you com¬ 
mended to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be 
wholly fickle and inconstant, and continually wafted about by 
every breath of fame. The worshipers of Serapis are Christians, 
and those are devoted to the God Serapis, who (I find) call 
themselves bisho s of Christ. There is here no ruler of a Jew¬ 
ish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Presbyter of the Christians, 
who is not either an astrologer, a soothsayer, or a minister to 


306 


HIEROCLES. 


obscene pleasures. The very Patriarch himself, should he come 
into Egypt, would be required by some to worship Serapis, and 
by others to worship Christ. They have, however, but one God, 
and it is one and the self-same, whom Christians, Jews, and 
Gentiles aiike adore; i. e., money.” And “co-incident with this 
unsophisticated testimony, is the never-refuted charge of Zoz- 
imus, that the Emperor Constantine learned the Christian 
religion from an Egyptian; and the fact admitted by Socrates, 
[the ecclesiastical historian] that the cross was found in tho 
temple of Serapis, and claimed by his worshi ers as the proper 
symbol of their religion.” 

Dio Prusaeus is supposed to mean the Christians w T hen he 
speaks of “those who cast away everything.” 

Martial has an epigram, ridiculing “the folly of giving the 
credit of rational fortitude for those fool-hardy wretches that 
rush on voluntary sufferings; . . . and who, it is assumed, 
could be nobody else than the primitive Chris'inns: 

“As late you saw, in early morning’s show, 

Mucius, the fool, on bright red ashes glow. 

If brave and patient, thence, he seems to thee, 

Thou art, methinks, as great a fool as he; 

For there, in robe of pitch, the tire prepared 
The wretch would burn, because the people stared” 

Juvenal, a contemporary of Martial, has three lines similar 
in description and spirit to the above. 

Epictetus has the following: “So it is possible that a man 
may arrive at this temper and become indifferent to these things 
from madness, or from habit, as the Galileans.” Dr. Lardner, 
in his “Evidences of the Christian Beligion,” says of the 
above passage: “I should rather think that Christians are 
intended.” 

Arrian has this single phrase: “ Like the Galileans,” who 
might or might not be Chris:ians. 

iSlius Aristides has this phrase: “To the impious people in 
Palestine,” to which the same remark w T i.l apply. 

Apuleius, also, has been appropriated by the desperate 
beaters up for evidences of the Christian religion. This writer, 
in his fantastical book of metamorphoses, tells a ridiculous 


HIEROCLES. 


307 


story of a man who was changed into an ass, and in that 
incarnation, sold to a baker —and describes his mistress, the 
baker’s wife, as a red-hot virago, an adulterous drunken thief, 
cheat, scold, and liar; but withal (as such characters gener¬ 
ally are) peculiarly religious. Dr. Lardner concludes: “ There 
can be no doubt that Apuleius here designs to represent a 
Christian woman.” Of this Robert Taylor says: “No doub:, no 
doubt! ’Tis hard to tell, whether Christianity or the ladies owe 
him the profoundest courtesy! With all deference to tne judge¬ 
ment of Dr. Lardner, I venture to suggest that this passage has 
not the remotest relation to that evidence for the Chris ian 
religion, which he wishes to bring forward. It bears a strong 
indication of the better and more honorable rank which the wife 
held in the domestic economy, under the ancient paganism, a 
fact which he and all other Christian advocates endeavor always 
to conceal. It indicates the prevalence of that better feeling 
towards the fair sex,” which obtained in Roman times. And 
“this undesigned discovery of the domestic economy under 
pagan auspices, is strongly corroborated by the fact, that among 
the paintings found in the ruins of Herculaneum, is a chaste 
and beautiful figure of the Matrimonial Yenus, holding a scep¬ 
tre of that dominion enjoyed by the wife in domestic affairs. 
Hence as Festus, under the article Clavis, observes: ‘ the keys 
Were consigned to the wife, as soon as she entered her hus¬ 
band’s house. To this purpose may the custom of the Egyp¬ 
tians be observed, among whom, the wife ruled in the private 
concerns of her husband; and accordingly, in their marriage 
ceremonies, he promised to obey her.’ Neither Christians nor 
Turks have ever been just to women.” 

But to the point. Among several other noted writers, men¬ 
tioned above, who flourished between 40 and 141 A. C., and who 
would be very likely to refer to the Christians, but who have 
not done so, are the really famous names of Seneca, and Piiny 
the Second. Now, “both these philosophers were living, and 
must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the 
earliest information of the existence of Jesus Christ, had such 
a person ever existed; their ignorance or their wilful silence 
on the subject, is not less than absolutely improbable. What¬ 
ever might be their dispositions with respect to the doctrines of 


308 


::, z r* p c l E s. 

Jesus, the miraculous darkness which is said to have accom¬ 
panied his crucifixion was a species of evidence that must have 
forced itself upon their senses. * Each of these philosophers in 
a laborious work, has recorded ail the great phenomena of 
nature, earthquakes, mete rs, comets, and eclipses, which his 
indefatigable curiosity could collect; neither of them have 
mentioned, or even alluded to, the miraculous darkness at the 
crucifixion. 5 — Gibbon. Alas! the Christian is con: trained to own 
that omnipotence itself is not omnipotent.” 

What remains, almost by itself, as pretending to give us 
nearly all the accounts we have of Jesus and early Christianity, 
is the Greek Testament, the number of whose various readings 
is at least one hundred and thirty thousand; the total number 
of words being one hundred and eighty-one thousand, two 
hundred and fifty-three! This book, moreover, contains a great 
many proven spurious passages, and a host of others which are 
regarded by the most eminent critics, scholars, and theologians 
as very suspicious; but which the present Commission on the new 
translation of the Bible dare no: eliminate, or even point out! 

From its very inception, Christianity had not only pious 
forgers and falsifiers within its x^ale, but a 1 so several schools of 
so-called “heretics” — some of them consisting of the most 
learned and enlightened men of their time, others mere fanatics 
and lunatics, like the “orthodox” Christians of to-day. Below 
will be found a condensed list of the troublesome, but honest 
heretics of the first two centuries: 

In the first century there were “The Apostolic Heretics,” 
who withstood the Christian scheme and its manipulators, mostly 
face to face. Their names, in the order of succession, are 
Hymeneus, Alexander, Philetus, Hermogenes, fiemas, Diotre- 
phes, Dositheus, a Samaritan who set himself up as the Messiah; 
Simon Magus; Menander, a pupil of Simon; Nicolas, founder of 
the sect of Nicolaitans, mentioned in “Revelations;” Cerinthus, 
against whom the gospel “according to John” was written; 
Basilides, who taught that it was Simon the Epicurean, and not 
Jesus, who was crucified, while Christ stood by and laughed at 
the mistake of the Jews; and Carpocatres, who worshiped 
images of Jesus, Paul, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and so 
forth, as having equal claims on human superstition. 


HIEROCLES. 


309 


Among the heretics of the second century we find the Naza- 
renes, a mere continuation of the Therapeutae; the Ebionites, a 
poor sect of untimely Unitarians, who fell into the reasonable 
conceit that Jesus Christ was a mere mortal man ; the Elcesaites, 
who, taught by their founder Elkai, maintained that Jesus 
Christ was a certain power whose height was sixty-six miles, 
his breadth twenty-four miles, and his thickness proportionately 
wonderful; Saturninus of Antioch; Cerdo of Syria; Marcion of 
Pontus; Valentine of Egypt; Bardesanes of Edessa; Tatian of 
Assyria; Theodotus, Artemon, Hermogcnes, Montanus.—Besides 
; hese, there were also that peculiar people who rece'.ved as holy 
scripture the book called “The Acts or Journeys of the Apos¬ 
tles Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul,” who believed 
That Christ was not really, but only apparently a man; and 
that he was seen by his disciples in various forms, sometimes as 
a young man, sometimes as an old one, sometime; as a child, 
sometimes great, sometimes small, sometimes so tall that his 
head would reach the clouds; that he was not crucified himself, 
but another in his stead, while he stood by and laughed at the 
mistake of those who imagined that they crucified him. 

Taking into consideration these schools of Heretics, in con¬ 
nection with the cheating and forging apologists and the learned 
and manly antagonists and despisers of Christianity, all within 
the first two centuries of its existence, the reader is now ena¬ 
bled to form a pretty correct judgment as to the character of 
the early Christians; while the biographies of the great and 
good pagans of those two centuries must have impressed him 
with a strong sense of contrast, very unfavorable to the rising 
sect of Galilean fanatics. 


310 


HYPATIA. 


HYPATIA. 

Fourteen and a half . centuries ago, there perished in the 
streets of Alexandria (then the intellectual metropolis of the 
world) the loveliest and purest, the most gifted and amiable 
woman that ever fell an innocent victim to the bloody intoler¬ 
ance of the Christian Church. Hypatia was the daughter of 
Theon, the mathematician, and if report be true, w r as beautiful 
beyond description. This woman, in her fair, fresh youth — 
the acknowledged literary belle of the luxurious emporium of 
the world — accepted martyrdom for the sake of science and 
philosophy. In less than four hundred years after Paul com¬ 
manded, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it 
is not permitted unto them to speak,” this “Mistress of Philos¬ 
ophy” arose in the Academy of Alexandria, and taught with a 
learning and eloquence which overmatched any of Paul’s suc¬ 
cessors in the Christian ministry. She argued against the vica¬ 
riousness of virtue, and taught that neither men nor gods can 
be justly punished lor the sins of others. She refused all her 
lovers that she might become a follower of the martyred philo¬ 
sopher of Greece. She determined to devote the whole of her 
time and splendid abilities to the cultivation and exposition 
of geometrical and philosophical problems, untrammeled by 
domestic relations. By teaching that monasticism was foolish 
and unnatural, she incurred the deadly hostility of the Arch¬ 
bishop, St. Cyril, and the bare-legged, black-cowled monks of 
Alexandria. And one delightful day in 415, as the young and 
beautiful preceptress went forth to her Academy, she was seized 
by a mob of Cyril’s murderous monks, dragged from her char¬ 
iot, and stripped naked in the public street. Her sweet person, 
that seemed to embody all the enchantments of ancient Grecian 
art and eloquence, poetry and philosophy, was then drawn into 
a Christian church, the flesh scraped from the bones with sharp 
shells, and the mangled remains flung into the flames. With 
Hypatia, expired the flickering flame of Philosophy in the 


HYPATIA. 


311 


Eastern world. Literature and learning lay prostrate at the 
feet of the Church all through the long night of the Dark Ages. 
Little is known of Hypatia’s life, except that her exalted mental 
and moral worth stamped such an indelible impression on the 
age in which she lived, that the Church was afterwards obliged 
to fraudulently appropriate the story of her martyrdom, and 
hand her down to posterity as the Christian St. Catherine of 
Alexandria! Probably no Catholic devotee now knows that such 
a character as Pagan Hypatia ever lived. Hypatia had many 
disciples, and became celebrated both at Alexandria and Athens. 
Orestes, the governor of Alexandria, had a high respect for her, 
and consulted her upon the most momentous matters. And 
even Synesius, who became a Christian bishop, awarded her the 
most glowing tributes of praise. This learned and trustworthy 
writer addressed many of his numerous* epistles, written in 
elegant Greek, to her, whom he terms the “Mistress of Philos¬ 
ophy.” In one^ he pleasantly styles her “mother, sister and 
teacher”; in another he seeks her sympathy in his sorrow at 
the death of his children. 

The tragic story of her murder marks the blackest page in 
the history of primitive Christianity. Her memory lives to-day 
■associated with whatever is pure and lovely in the antiquity of 
thought. We feel that this volume would be incomplete without 
this brief sketch of the gifted Hypatia, the beautiful Freethinker 
of the fifth century. 


312 


PROCLUS. 


PROCLUS. 


This eminent man, who has been truly called “ The Last of 
the Ancient Philosophers,’' was born at Constantinople in the 
year 412. He studied under several tutors at Alexandria, and 
under Plutarchus and his wonderful daughter at Athens, where 
he afterwards succeeded Syrianus as the head of the Neo-Pla¬ 
tonic School. 

Among his numerous works are treatises “On the Spheres;” 
“On Providence and Fate”; “On the Subsistence of Evil”; 
“On the Ten Doubts about Providence”, “Theological Ele¬ 
ments”; “On Platonic Theology”; some beautiful “Hymns,” 
by many esteemed far superior to the Orphic remains; and 
“ Eighteen Arguments against Christians”, in which work he 
endeavored to prove that the world is eternal. 

Proclus w T as possessed of great strength and remarkable per¬ 
sonal beauty, which numerous matrimonial proposals attested;, 
but his adherence to fasts and vigils, to labor and asceticism, 
led him to decline such connections. He was married to Phi¬ 
losophy. Acquainted with all the creeds and rites of the ancient. 
Pantheons of the different nations, he not only philosophized 
upon them in an allegorizing and symbolizing spirit, but from 
them and the doctrines of the several and even antagonistic 
schools of Philosophy, Chaldaic, Orphic, Hermetic, Pythago¬ 
rean, Platonic, Aristotelian, and so forth, he strove to demon¬ 
strate that there is but one real principle of things, viz.: Unity, 
and that he had the key to the integral reconciliation and unifi¬ 
cation of all rites and teachings, which key was this: That 
Unity (or One and the First , as he also calls it) by its own 
development produces all things by Triads, which Triads he 
considered to be Unity, Duality, (which is identical with limita¬ 
tion and boundlessness^, and the Complex of Both, which con¬ 
tains Being, Life and Intelligence—the three fundamental 
disposition of things. He further tries to recognize and tO' 
fathom the original mysterious One by a combination of figures,. 


PROCLUS. 


313 

strongly reminding us of Gnosticism and the later Cabala. 
Furthermore, he was an earnest believer in Pneumatology; he 
had no doubt of his immediate and direct intercommunication 
with High Spirits; and he distinctly believed himself to be one 
of the few chosen links of the Hcrmaic chain through which 
divine revelation reaches mankind. He held inspiration, mystic 
and mantic, to be preferable to all human knowledge and wis¬ 
dom. That same cosmopolitan spirit in religious matters which 
pervaded Rome towards her end, had spread throughout all the 
civilized “pagan” world of those days, and Proclus distinctly 
laid it down as an axiom, that a true philosopher must also be 
a Hierophant of the Whole World. To become all this, he fasted 
and performed other hard and painful rites of abnegation, and 
to such an extent that he more than once endangered his life 
thereby. He certainly excelled, in many respects, all his prede¬ 
cessors in the Platonic chair at Athens, improved the Eclectic 
system by many new discoveries, and was the author of many 
opinions which had never before entered the mind of man, both 
in physics and metaphysics. Indeed, M. Cousin maintained that 
all tile philosophic rays which emanated from Pythagoras, 
Plato, Aristotle, and all the other great thinkers of Greece, 
were concentrated in Proclus. 

Such a philosopher and pietist would be naturally eager to 
win disciples from Chris;ianity itself. Accordingly he wrote a 
“book” to that effect, and, as a natural consequence, his 
“enemy” found him out, aed revengefully triumphed for a 
while. In fact he and his work became so obnoxious to the 
Christian authorities at Athens, that they, in accordance with 
the spirit of intolerance and fanaticism which animated the 
new and successful sect, banished him from the city. Allowed 
to return, he was forced to act with somewhat more prudence 
and circumspection, and only permitted his most approved dis¬ 
ciples to take part in the nightly assemblies in which he pro¬ 
pounded his doctrines. He died in 485, in his full vigor, and in 
the entire possession of all his mental powers, for which he 
was no less remarkable than for his personal beauty and 
strength. 

Of him Lewes, in his Biographical History of Philosophy, 
gaysi — ^He regarded the Orphic poems and the Chaldean ora>r 


PROCLUS. 


'314 

■cles as divine revelations, and therefore, as the real source of 
philosophy, if properly interpreted; and in this allegorical 
interpretation consisted his whole system. 

* The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 

The fair humanities of old religion, 

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, 

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, 

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 

Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished; 

They live no longer in the faith of reason! 

But still the heart doth need a language, still 
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names; 

And to yon starry world they now are gone, 

Spirits or Gods that used to share this earth 
With man as with their friend.' 

“ To restore the beautiful Pagan creed, by interpreting its 
symbols in a new sense, was the aim of the whole Alexandrian 
School.” 

“ Ancient Philosophy expired with Proclus. Those who came 
after him, though styling themselves philosophers, were in 
truth religious thinkers employing philosophical formulre. . . . 
Argue, refine, divide, and subdivide as they would, these relig¬ 
ious thinkers only used Philosophy as a subsidiary process: for 
all the great problems. Faith was their only instrument. 

“ The succeeding epochs are usually styled the epochs of 
Christian Pli losophy; yet Christian Philosophy is a misnomer. 

. . . . To talk of Christian Philosophy is an abuse of lan¬ 
guage. Christian Philosophy means Christian Metaphysics, and 
that means the solution of metaphysical problems upon Chris¬ 
tian principles. Now what are Christian principles but the doc¬ 
trines revealed through Christ; revealed because inaccessible to 
Reason; revealed and accepted by Faith , because Reason is 
utterly incompetent ?” 

So, Ecclesiastical Scholasticism reigned almost uninterrupt¬ 
edly from Proclus to Bacon! And it was not until the present 
century that “Philosophy” (so called) finally relinquished its 
place in favor of Positive Science. 


THEODORIC. 


315 


THEODORIC. 

Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, was born 455. 
At the age of seven years he was sent to Constantinople to the 
court of Leo Magnus as a hostage, peace having been concluded 
between this Emperor and King Theodemir, his father. He 
received his education at Constantinople, and returned to his 
father in 472. 

He attacked and subjugated the Sclavonian tribes on the 
Danube without any orders, and afterwards accompanied his 
royal father in his expedition to Thessaly, which was under¬ 
taken for the purpose of extending the territory of the Goths. 
They acquired by this expedition (474) a part of Pannonia and 
Dacia. 

In 475 Theodemir died and Theodoric became king of the 
Ostrogoths. In 489 he assembled his nation for the invasion of 
Italy. A whole nation, men, women, and children, carrying all 
their movable property with them, left their homes and took the 
road to Italy, following the course of the Danube. Enduring 
•every kind of hardship, and fighting their way through the 
armed inhabitants, the Goths traversed the western part of 
Pannonia, crossed the Julian Alps, and reached Isonzo, where 
they were opposed by the army of Odoacer, the chief of the 
Rugians, which was beaten in three battles (490). Theodoric 
was soon after acknowledged as king of Italy by the Emperor 
Anastasius, who gave him the furniture of the palace at 
Ravenna. He did not assume the imperial title, although he 
adopted the name of Flavius. 

He went to Rome in 500 and celebrated a triumph. He con¬ 
vened the Senate, confirmed the immunities of the Romans, and 
gained the affection of the people by his liberality and the 
exhibition of magnificent spectacles. He displayed the qualities 
of a great king, confirming his power by alliances with the 
neighboring rulers. In 509 he espoused a sister of Clovis, king 


316 


THEODOItlC. 


of the Franks. We cannot here follow him through his career 
of conquest and his many successful military expeditions. 

Justin, Emperor of Constantinople, in 523 published a severe 
edict against all who were not of the Orthodox church, and 
soon after deprived the Arians of their churches. This emperor 
had also formed designs against the Gothic dominions in Italy. 
He had engaged the Homan Senate and the first men in Italy 
in the conspiracy; but the i>rompt and xu’udent measures of 
Theodoric rendered the conspiracy abortive, and resulted in 
establishing the Gothic power in Italy. He regulated the 
administration of justice, reversed the laws, encouraged com¬ 
merce, and allayed religious disputes. 

The Goths were Arians, and Theodoric ordered Pope John 
with several bishops to go to Constantinople to obtain better 
conditions for the Arians in the Eastern empire. He did not, 
however, succeed in this negotiation; and while preparing to- 
enforce terms of toleration upon the Catholics in his own 
dominions, he suddenly died on the twenty-sixth of August, 526„ 
in the seventy-second year of his age. His ashes were deposited 
in a porphyry urn, which still exists in the wall of the castle of 
Haven: a, in which city he had held his court. During his 
reign this city became the center of the arts and sciences, and 
of no less importance than Rome. Among his officers were 
many distinguished men, such as Cassiodorus, who was his pri¬ 
vate secretary. 

Theodoric was celebrated as a hero in the old Teutonic 
songs. He was not only great as a conqueror, but also as a 
legislator. It is his greatest glory that he was a friend of 
peace, of justice, and of toleration. Whenever a war between 
the Teutonic kings was threatened, he sought to prevent it by 
mediation. He always reminded them that they were of one 
common origin, and that they ought to maintain peace and 
friendly intercourse. He was especially vigilant in preventing 
Clovis from invading the territories of his neighbors; he pro¬ 
tected the Thuringians and the Alemanni, and several times 
saved the kingdom of the Visigoth 3 from destruction. 

As a warrior and a ruler, a promoter of peace, and art and 
learning, The doric the Goth ranks with the distinguished few 
whose names are most illustrious in the annals of Home. And 


THEODORIC, 


317 


posterity, as Gibbon observes, may contemplate without terror 
the original picture of a Gothic king, as observed by the orator 
Sidonius. “By the majesty of his appearance, Theodoric would 
•command the respect of those who are ignorant of his merit; 
•and although he is born a prince, his merit would dignify a 
private station. He is of a middle stature, his body appears 
rather plump than fat, and in his well-proportioned limbs agility 
ii§ united with muscular strength. If you examine his counten¬ 
ance you will distinguish a high forehead, large shaggy eye¬ 
brows, an aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of white teeth, 
and a fair complexion, that blushes more frequently from 
modesty than from anger.” 

The manners of Theodoric were gentle and humane; his 
person was loved and his virtues respected. Of the great Goth, 
Gibbon thus observes: “His reputation may justly repo-e on 
the visible peace and prosperity of a reign of thirty-three years, 
the unanimous esteem of his own times, and the memory of his 
wisdom and courage, his justice and humanity, which was 
deeply impressed on the minds of the Goths and the Italians.” 

Theodoric may be compared with the greatest men of antiq¬ 
uity; and he deserves, in most respects, the greatest regard 
and veneration. Indeed, it is not possible to produce a more 
beautiful picture of an excellent administration, than that under 
the great Gothic monarch. He not only tolerated all sects of 
Christians, but allowed the Jews, who were regarded with great 
abhorrence, to rebuild their synagogues which had fallen to 
ruins. It is acknowledged by Christians themselves, that at no 
period did their church enjoy greater harmony or prosperity, 
notwithstanding Theodoric was an Arian. 

The following are some of his maxims of toleration: “No 
one can be forced to believe in spite of himself. Since the 
Deity suffers various religions we dare not prescribe a single 
one. We remember having read that God must be sacrificed to 
willingly, and not under the constraint of a master.” Theo¬ 
doric lulfilled the promise made upon his accession to the 
throne of Italy, “ that the only regret of the people would be 
not to have come at an earlier period under tse sway of the 


Goths.” 


318 


MOHAMMED. 


MOHAMMED. 

In the whole compass of human knowledge, looking down 
all the stately line of figures whose mere names serve as the 
best landmarks of human history, there is not one whose life 
better deserves to be known, to become, as some of Shaks- 
pere’s characters have become, an integral part of thought 
rather than a subject for thought, than that of the great Ara¬ 
bian prophet and reformer, the subject of this sketch. 

That a man obscure in all but birth, brought up among an 
unlettered race, with no knowledge and no material resources, 
should, by pure force of genius, extinguish idolatry through 
hundred tribes, unite them into one vast aggressive movement, 
and, dying, leave to men who were not his children the 
mastery of the Oriental world; that his system should survive 
himself for twelve centuries as a living missionary force; that 
it should not merely influence but utterly remodel one-fourth 
of the human race, and that fourth the unchangeable one;, 
that it should after twelve centuries still be so vital that an 
Asiatic, base to a degree we are unable to comprehend, should 
still, if appealed to in the name of Mohammed, start up a 
hero, fling away life with a glad laugh of exultation, or risk a 
throne to defend a guest; that after that long period, when its 
stateliest empires have passed away, and its greatest achieve¬ 
ments have been forgotten, it should still be the only force 
able to hurl Western Asia on the iron civilization of Europe — 
this is indeed a phenomenon in the world’s history that men 
of every belief and generation will be wise to consider. 

Few religions have b en founded in plain day like Islam, 
which now counts its believers by more than two hundred 
millions, and which during the comparatively short period 
of i s existence has displayed its victorious banners over all 
Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, and the coasts of 
Africa, and the precepts of which are now zealously followed 
from the Ganges to the Atlantic. Most clearly and sharply 


MOHAMMED. 


31fr 


does Mohammed stand out against the horizon of history. The- 
shadowy and mythical elements, as in the history of all other 
founders of religions, are here wanting. The mythical, the. 
legendary, and the supernatural find no place in the original 
Arab authorities. Nobody is here the dupe of himself or of 
others; there is the full light of day upon all which light can 
ever reach; though the abyssmal depths of personality must 
ever remain beyond the reach of any line and plummet of ours. 

Briefly narrated, the chief events of the life of Mohammed 
previous to his assumption of the prophetic office in his fortieth- 
year, are as follows: 

Born at Mecca, the holy city of Arabia, in the year 570 of 
the Christian era; the posthumous son of Abdallah, himself a 
younger son of the hereditary chief of the valiant and illustri¬ 
ous tribe of the Koreish, he started in life with scarcely any 
possessions beyond his illustrious descent. But poverty, be it 
remembered, does not in Asia affect pedigree; a Brahmin beg¬ 
ging is better than a Sudra reigning; and though poor himself,, 
Mohammed stood from his birth armored by wealthy relatives, 
and high-placed kinsmen. His mother dying while the future 
prophet was still in his infancy, his guardianship devolved 
upon Abu Taleb, a wealthy and powerful uncle, who became 
so attached to hi ; orphan charge, that after a life passed in 
struggles in his behalf, his last words were a prayer to his 
kinsman to protect his nephew. With this uncle he spent the 
earlier part of his life, and at home and abroad, in peace and 
in war, Abu Taleb was his faithful guide and guardian. With 
him the youthful Mohammed journeyed to Damascus, Yemen,, 
and elsewhere, and was his companion on various expeditions; 
all of which tended to enlarge his sphere of observation, and. 
give him a quick insight into character and a knowledge of 
human affairs. He afterwards became a shepherd, and tended 
the flocks, even as Moses, David, and all the prophets had 
done, he used to say; “Pick me out the blackest of those ber¬ 
ries, ” he cried once at Medina, when, prophet and king, he 
saw some people pass with berries of the wild shrub arak; 

“ pick me out the blackest, for they are sweet, even such as I 
was wont to gather when I tended the flocks of Mecca at 
Ajyad.” We next find him in the service of the wealthy widow 


.320 


MOHAMMED. 


Khadijah, acting as agent in her commercial operations. His 
subsequent marriage with Khadijah, while yet in his twen- 
ly-fifth year, at once placed Mohammed among the most 
wealthy of Mecca, while his moral worth gave him great influ¬ 
ence in the community, where, from the purity and sincerity 
of his life, he had earned for himself the title of A1 Amin, or 
the Faithful. Khadijah left him entirely to his meditations, 
relieving him of all cares of business, and Mohammed giving 
full play to his natural temperament, wandered incessantly 
.among the mountains which overlook Mecca, feeding his heart 
with reverie. 

By this alliance the son of Abdallah was restored to the 
station of his ancestors, and during the remaining years of the 
life of Khadijah, Mohammed was her faithful husband; and to 
his credit be it said that, in a land of polygamy, he never 
insulted her by the presence of a rival. Long afterwards, when 
the good Khadijah was no more, Ayesha, then his young and 
favorite wife, one day questioned him, “Now, am I not better 
than Khadijah ? She was a widow, old and toothless; do you 
not love me better than you did her?” “No, by Allah!” 
answered Mohammed in a bunt of honest gratitude, “No, by 
Allah! She believed in me when men despised me; in the 
whole world I had but one friend, and she was that!” 

Of the fifteen years which eia sod between the marriage of 
Mohammed and the commencement of his career as a prophet, 
little is said by his biographers. It was during this deeply 
interesting portion of his life that he was led to contrast the 
purity of the primitive faith of Abraham with the corruptions 
which had from time to time been engrafted upon it. His soul 
burned with indignation while he thought of the fearful extent 
that the religion of his ancestors had been perverted by the 
corrupt devices of men. As time wore on, the consequent 
gloom and misery of his heart became more and more terrible. 
Solitude to him had become a passion. No one seemed to 
lieed the brooder; no one stretched out the hand of sympathy 
to him. He had nothing in common with the rest, and he was 
left to himself. 

At this point let us pause to enquire regarding the state of 
religious affairs in Arabia at that time, a time indeed that 


MOHAMMED. 


ooi 

loudly called for a reformation, or at least a change. Arabia 
was free; the kingdoms adjacent were shaken by the storms of 
tyranny and conquest, and the persecuted sects fled to that 
country where they might enjoy mental and religious freedom. 
The Jews had also settled in large numbers from the time of 
their dispersion by Titus and Hadrian. Christianity, through 
the ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had been brought 
into a condition of anarchy, and, notwithstanding its professed 
adherence to the true God, had become extremely idolatrous. 
To them also, Arabia, the unconquere 1 land of liberty, became 
an asylum. Added to this the Arabian peninsula had from a 
remote period of antiquity become the seat of the gross idola¬ 
try of the Magians and Sabians, the former being worshipers 
of fire, the latter of images. These were the most powerful 
sects in Arabia, and between which the Arabs were divided. 
Thus, it will be seen, between the constant warring and dispu¬ 
tations of these many forms of belief, the ground was fully 
prepared for a great social and religious revolution. 

In his solitary meditations in the cave of Hera, Mohammed 
was drawn to the conclusion that through the cloud of dogmas 
.and conflicting faiths around him might be discerned the one 
great truth —the Unity of God. “Is it not possible,” he would 
ask, “ to rescue mankind from the worship of idols, and to 
restore the worship of the true God ?” The accomplishment of 
such a task seemed to him the highest and holiest mission 
which a man could undertake. 

Let it here be understood, that at the commencement of his 
•career as a religious reformer, Mohammed had no desire to 
establish a new religion, but simply to restore that pure Theism 
which he found underlying both Judaism and Christianity. It 
was for the accomplishment of this purpose that Mohammed 
dedicated his life. Both in his sermons and in the Koran he 
expressly declared: “I am nothing but a public preacher. . . 

I preach the Unity of God.” Such, then, was his own concep¬ 
tion of his so-called apostleship. 

From his youth, Mohammed was addicted to religious con¬ 
templation, and each year, during, the month of Ramadan, he 
would withdraw to the silence of the mountains, and there in 
-a lonely cave would take up his abode, and with his heart open 


322 


MOHAMMED. 


to the still email voices, would give himself up to fasting, med¬ 
itation and prayer. 

Among physicians it is a well-known fact that mental anxiety 
and fasting usually give rise to hallucination and an abnormal 
activity to the imagination. Mysterious voices encouraged him 
to persist in his determination; visions appeared unto him and 
shadows of strange forms passed before him. He heard s umds- 
in the air as of distant bells. When he left his cave to walk 
about on his rocky fastness, the wild herbs that grew in the. 
clefts would bend their heads, and the stones i t his path would 
cry: “Hail, O Prophet of God!” and horrified, not daring to 
look about liiir, he fled back into his cave. In a dream or 
trance in “the blessed night of A1 Kadr,” as the Koran hath 
it, he saw an angel in human form, but flooded with celestial 
light, and displaying a silver roll. “Bead!” said the angel; 
“I cannot read,” said Mohammed. Again it called: “Read! 
read in the name of the Lord, who created man out of a clot 
of blood; read, in the name of the Most High, who taught 
man the use of the pen, who sheds on his soul the ray of 
knowledge, and teaches him what before he knew not.” Upon 
this Mohammed felt the heavenly inspiration, and read the 
decrees of God, which he afterwards promulgated in the Koran. 
Then came the announcement: “O Mohammed, of a truth 
thou art the Prophet of God, and I am his angel Gabriel.” 
(vide Sura 96.) Afterwards, in a nocturnal dream, he was carried 
by Gabriel from Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence in succession 
through the six heavens. Into the seventh heaven the angel 
feared to in!rude, and Mohammed alone passed into the dread 
cloud that forever enshrouds the Almighty. He approached 
within two bowshots of the throne, and felt a chill that pierced 
him to the heart, when he felt upon his shoulders the cold 
hand of God; and here, says the Koran, “he saw the greatest of 
the signs of his Lord.” He again descended to Jerusalem, 
remounted A1 Borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the 
tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. The 
account of this miraculous journey, however, the Koran em¬ 
phatically declares to be a dream or vision, (vide Sura 17.) 

We have now reached the' crisis of Mohammed’s life. He 
had, as he believed, received a formal call to renounce idolatry 


M O H A. M MED. 


323 


and assume the office of prophet. He could not at first believe 
that so unworthy an instrument could be chosen for such a 
purpose; “Woe is me, for I am undone,” he exclaimed, “ I am 
a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of 
unclean lips.” Before assuming the prophetic office a long 
period of hesitation, doubt, and preparation followed; and not 
until lie became clear as to his mission did he seek converts. 
His fir t convert was his faithful Khadijah; his second, the 
freed slave Zeid; and his third, his cousin Ali. Three years 
passed during which time he had gained only fourteen converts. 
Up to this time he had confined his teachings to his kinsmen 
and bosom friends; but in the fourth year of his mission he 
publicly assumed the office of Prophet, but his teachings seemed 
to make no way beyond the very limited circle of his earliest 
followers. His rising hopes were crushed. People pointed the 
finger of scorn at him as he passed by —“There gceth the son 
of Abdallah who hath his converse with the heavens.” They 
called him a driveller, a star-gazer, a maniac-poet. His kinsmen 
of the tribe of Koreish, vainly endeavored to divert him from 
his purpose. They tried persuasions, entreaties, bribes, and 
threats. “Should they array against me the sun on my right 
hand and the moon on my left,” said Mohammed, “yet while 
God should command me I will not renounce my purpose.’’ 
These are not the words, nor is this the course of an imposter. 
Failing in all their entreaties and threats the Koreish resorted 
to persecution. From henceforth his life was in jeopardy, and 
his uncle Abu Taleb, although not a believer in the mission of 
Mohammed, still protected him from all the attempts of his j 
enemies. In the meantime several of the noblest citizens, 
among them the stern and inflexible Omar, were successively 
gained to the side of the Prophet. Ten years passed away; his 
doctrine fought its way amidst the greatest discouragements and 
dangers by purely moral means, by its own inherent strength. 

As usual, the weak and unprotected became the first martyrs to 
their faith, and to such an extent did the early converts to 
Islam suffer persecution that by the advice of Mohammed they 
were obliged to take refuge in Abyssinia. Nothing could be 
more hopeless than Mohammed’s position up to this time. 
Only a stern conviction or the reality of his mis-ion could have 


321 


M 0 HAMMED. 


supported him through this long period of failure, loneliness 
and contempt. During all these years the wildest imagination 
could not have pictured the success which was to come. 

At last, finding his enemies all banded against him; forty 
sworn men waiting to take his life, and a continuance at Mecca 
no longer possible, the Prophet was forced to flee to Yathreb, 
from that time forth honored by the name of Medina, or Medi- 
nat al Nctbi, the City of the Prophet. From this flight, or 
Hegira , the whole East dates its era. This event occurred in 
July, 622, of the Christian era, and the fifty-third of Moham¬ 
med’s life. 

The fugitive from Mecca was received in Medina with all the 
honors due a king. This man, branded as an imposter by the 
Meccans, was now regarded as the Prophet of God, and as such 
was received by his adherents in Medina. The choice of a free 
people elected Mohammed to the rank of a sovereign, and he 
was invested with all the prerogatives of forming alliances, and 
of waging offensive and defensive war. The Prophet, in spite of 
himself, had, by force of circumstances become more than a 
Prophet. From this time forward we must regard Mohammed 
not only in the character of a prophet, but as a temporal ruler 
as well, and his political conduct must be compared to that of 
men who have political responsibilities, and not with the con¬ 
duct of prophets and sages who have no political character 
at all. Without doubt his newly acquired power put the man 
to severer tests, and with it came new temptations and failures, 
from which the shepherd of the desert might have remained free. 
But happy is the man, who, living 

“ In the fierce light that beats upon the throne. 

And blackens every blot,” 

could stand the test as well as did Mohammed. 

Suddenly the Prophet found himself in a position he had not 
courted, a position forced upon him by his enemies. To defend 
himself and his adherents from the continued attacks of the 
Koreish, and to avenge the wrongs of his persecuted people, 
many of whom had suffered martyrdom, he as chief of the 
nation, and for temporal purposes only, unsheathed the sword. 
This whd son of the desert— prince, prophet, and potentate — 


MO HAM MED. 


325 


like a man and an Arab, resolved to defend himself and his 
people. In succeeding battles with the Koreish, and in future 
wars, he entered battle personally in order to encourage his fol¬ 
lowers, but carried no weapon of war. He forbade the slaugh¬ 
ter of non-belligerents, the burning of cornfields, cruelty to pris¬ 
oners, or mutilation of the dead, practices from which his 
adversaries did not abstain. He did not prolong war through 
ambition, but made peace as soon as he could give hope of 
permanence. It may here be said that the wars of Mohammed 
were mainly defensive. In fact, the Prophet condemns aggres¬ 
sive wars; “ Defend yourself against your enemies in the war 
of enterprise for religion, but attack them not; God hateth the 
aggressor,” says the Koran. 

The extraordinary success of the earlier battles of Moham¬ 
med—known to history as the battles of Beder, of Ohud, and 
of the Nations — deepened the impression, half natural to an 
Arab, that the sword might be a legitimate instrument of 
spiritual warfare, and that God had put into his hands a new 
means, when all other means, as in the case of previous pro¬ 
phets, had failed. Hitherto Mohammed had made converts by 
way of preaching and persuasion alone. But the season of for¬ 
bearance had elapsed, all milder means had proved unavailing, 
the deep cry of his heart was unheeded; and Mohammed 
resolved to use the sword, and destroy the monuments of idol¬ 
atry throughout the land. 

Let us pass over the remaining ten years of his stormy 
life — a period of breathless, impetuous toil and struggle —and 
take one last look at the man when, having reached the pin¬ 
nacle of earthly glory and fame —having exterminated forever, 
the idolatry of Arabia, i is own apostle hip accepted, and his 
doctrine that “There is but one God” universally adopted by 
his countrymen — he approached the close of life. 

Still steadfast in his declaration of the Unity of God, he 
undertook his last solemn pilgrimage to Mecca. Nearing the 
holy city he exclaimed, “Here am I in thy service, O God! 
To thee alone belongeth worship. Thine alone is the kingdom. 
There is none to share it with thee.” After offering up with 
his own hands the customary sacrifices, and preaching to the pil¬ 
grims from the pulpit of the Caaba, he ascended Mount Arafat, 


326 


MOHAMMED. 


and there in the presence of 40,000 Moslems, like Moses, blessed 
his people, and repeated his last exhortations. 

Feeling the chill hand of death upon him, he returned to 
Medina. In liis farewell sermon to his congregation, he said, 
“ I return to him who sent me, and my last command to you 
is, that you love, honor, and uphold each other, that you 
exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and espec¬ 
ially in the performance of pious and charitable deeds. My life 
has been for your good, and so will be my death.” 

In his dying agony his head reclined on the lap of his wife 
Ayesha, who from time to time moistened the face of the dying 
Prophet. She looked into his face, saw his eyes gazing stead¬ 
fastly upward, while in a faltering voice and broken accents he 
murmured, “O, God —forgive my sins — be it so —among my 
glorious associates in Paradise — I come.” Praying, Ayesha 
took his hand in hers, when she let it sink it was cold and 
dead. The fitful fever of life was ended. Upon the news of 
the Prophet’s death, the city was the scene of clamorous sorrow 
and silent despair. Many among the faithful refused to believe 
it; “By Allah, he is not dead, but like Moses and Jesus, he is 
wrapped in a holy trance, and will speedily return to his faith¬ 
ful people. Omar, in the agony of grief, drew his scimiter, and 
wildly rushed in among the weeping Mussulmans, swore that he 
would strike off the head of any one who dared to say the 
Prophet was no more. But Abu Bekr, the successor to the 
Caliphate, rebuked him, saying, “ Is it then Mohammed, or 
the God of Mohammed, that you have learned to worship? The 
God of Mohammed liveth forever, but the Apostle was only a 
mortal like ourselves, and has but experienced the fate of 
mortality.” 

To judge impartially of the true character and motives of 
the Prophet of Arabia, we must, as far as possible, identify 
ourselves with the times in which he lived, and the influences 
by which he was surrounded. By so doing his course will 
appear intelligible and natural, if not entirely defensible. It is 
a great mistake to judge the man by the canons of criticism 
properly applied to men of our own day and nation. We must 
remember that Mohammed, to whatever rank his noble birth 
entitled him, was but a wild, uncultured son of the desert. One 


MOHAMMED. 


327 


of a swift-handed, deep-hearted, impulsive, and noble race of 
men. In short, he was a typical Arab. Remember, too, that 
he was untutored and illiterate. Life in the desert, with its 
experiences, was all his education. Shut out from the great 
world by grim deserts, barren rock-mountains, pathless seas of 
:sand, he was left alone with the Universe and his own thoughts. 
Hemmed in as he was, without a knowledge of literature or 
books, what was he to know except what he could see for him¬ 
self? Of what help to him was the accumulated wisdom of the 
world ? It was all a sealed book to Mohammed. Nor was the 
religious atmosphere of Arabia of a nature to satisfy the deep 
longings of a fiery soul thirsting for knowledge. It could not 
penetrate for him the sacred mystery of the Universe. What 
to this earnest soul was the idolatry of his countrymen ? Nought 
but a mockery and a delusion. With his sincere heart and 
flashing perception he had seen through it all. “Idols, what 
are they? Bits of gilded wood pretending to be God. You rub 
them with oil and wax and the flies stick to them. These are 
wood, I tell you. They can do nothing for you. They are an 
infamous, blasphemous pretence. God alone is; he is great, 
and there is nothing else great.” 

The great mysteries of existence glared in upon him. “What 
;am I? What is this unfathomable thing I live in which men 
name Universe ? What is life; what is death ? What am I to 
believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hera, of 
Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not; the great 
heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, 
answered not. There was no answer. The man’s own soul, 
and what of God’s inspiration dwelt there, had to answer.” It 
was for him to penetrate the “open secret of the Universe” 
— open to all, but seen by few. To Mohammed’s inquiring soul 
the veil of mystery was lifted, and he, as few men have ever 
done, fathomed that deep secret. He had seen through the 
shows of things into the reality of things. It was this same 
poetic insight that gave, some ten centuries later, a Shakspere 
to the world. It was the prophetic voice of the great soul of 
Dante that burst forth into that mystic, unfathomable song— 
the Divinia Commedia. Prophet and poet are fundamentally 
fthe same. In some old languages the titles are synonymous. 


323 


MOHAMMED. 


The word votes is used for either. The same deep insight into- 
that “open secret” exists in both. They have each explored 
the same deep mysteries, and from hearts laden with Nature’s 
sublime truths, the}^ speak to the world. The prophet seizes 
the sacred mystery on the moral side, the poet on the sestheti- 
cal. The one is a reveal er of what we should do, the other of 
what we are to love. Mohammed was not the first in the 
world’s history who, having seen into these internal splendors, 
conceived himself an object of special revelation from God 
sent for a purpose. It was, says the Celtic bard, the same 
refined intelligence 

“-That glowed 

In Moses’ frame — and thence descending, flowed 
Through many a prophet’s breast — in Jesus shone, 

And in Mohammed burned.” 

Light had come to illumine the darkness of this wild Arab' 
soul. To him it seemed a direct revelation from God, sent by 
the angel Gabriel; and however it may appear to us, it was an 
awful reality to him. For ten years he preached to his coun¬ 
trymen, in words of burning eloquence, the heaven-sent mes¬ 
sage. For ten years he was spurned and persecuted by his 
people, deserted by his friends, cast out by his kinsmen. 
But, spared the cross and thorns of the Galilean, he lived to 
triumph. 

This is the man who is called an impostor, an ambitious 
charlatan, seeking for empty fame alone. This current hypothe¬ 
sis is no longer tenable. The falsehoods which Christian zealots 
have heaped about this man are disgraceful to hemselves. 
alone. With the facts of his life before us the theory of con¬ 
scious imposture becomes worthy of dismissal only. There is 
no evidence in favor of such a theory; it is entirely without 
support, and must forever be abandoned. 

To admit that Mohammed was not faultless is only to admit, 
that he was human. To his lasting glory be it said that he 
never claimed to be more than a weak and fallible mortal; had 
he not been conscious of this fact it would have been his grea - 
c.-t fault. But, in this little world of ours, are we not too apt 
<■ j i ige a man by his faults alone? We should remember that. 



MOHAMMED. 


329? 


they are but the outward details of a life, and which too often, 
hide the virtues within. An earnest soul, struggling for what is 
best and good, though often baffled never gives up; often 
falls, but with tears and repentance rises again —still presses, 
towards the goal; falls again and again, but ever, with bleed¬ 
ing heart and unconquerable purpose, begins anew. What, 
then, is a man’s struggle f r the mastery of himself but a suc¬ 
cession of falls? We repeat, that a man should not be judged 
by his faults alone — unles -, perchance, he be also a stranger 
to that highest virtue, repentance. Nor should we attempt to 
measure by the scale of perfection the m agre product of 
reality. 

As regards the character and personal worth of Mohammed 
we can speak only in praise. The abuse that has been lieaied 
upon him by those unable to appreciate his noble qualities and 
the sincerity of his motives, enlists, on our part, a feeling of 
sympathy whi h we cannot well disguise. But before speaking 
in detail of his character, let us note the gradual change cf 
opinion that has taken place regarding him. We first find him 
referred to by Christian writers under the name of Mawmet, or 
Maphomet, and represented to be an idol of gold and an 
object of worship by the Saracens. In the twelfth century the- 
god Mawmet passes i .to the heresiarch Mahomet, and as such, 
occupies a conspicuous place in the Inferno. The mediceval 
Christians took great pleasure in flinging red-hot epithets at 
him: “He is a debauchee, a camel-stealer, a cardinal, who* 
having failed to obtain the object of every cardinal’s ambition, 
invents a new religion to avenge himself on his brethren.”' 
Lu her indulged in a disquisition as to whether the pope or 
Mohammed was the worst; but, happily, he decided in favor of 
the pope. According to this great reformer, “at the time of 
the Emperor Heraclius there arose a man, yea, a devil, and a. 
first-born child of Satan . . . who wallowed in . . . and 

he was dealing in the Black Art, and his name it was Machu- 
met.” Even the “gen;le Melanchthon ” claimed that Mohammed 
was inspired by Satan, and that he was both Gog and Magog 
in one. In later times, and even in our own day, he divides 
with the pope the questionable honor of being the subject of 
special prophecy in the books of Daniel and the Bevelations. 


330 


MOHAMMED. 


He is Anti-Christ, the Man of Sin, the Little Horn. The 
silly abuse of Dean Prideaux and the Abbe Maracci in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we can afford to pass 
silently by. In fact, not a single writer, unless we except the 
Jew Maimonides, until about the middle of the last century, 
treats of him else than as a rank impostor and a false prophet. 
Hut, thanks to the vast stores of information opened to us by 
the indefatigable researches of Gagnier, Sale, Sprenger, Muir, 
and other Oriental scholars, we are at last enabled to see the 
man in his true character. 

We see in him a man of the deepest convictions and purest 
purposes; zealous for the furtherance of what he conceives to be 
the right; kind and charitable to all; faithful to his friends, 
forgiving to his enemies. He was valiant and brave, he was 
loving and kind —the two opposite poles of a great soul, 
between which all the other virtues have room. His life was 
spent in doing good, and in seeking to improve the moral and 
social condition of his people. Even his enemies, who rejected 
his mission, with one voice extol his piety, his justice, his ver¬ 
acity, his clemency. Once, upon being asked to curse some one, 
he replied, “I am not sent to curse, but to be a blessing to 
mankind.” He wept like a child over the grave of his faithful 
servant Zeid. “He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, 
accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own 
clothes, milked his goats, and waited upon himself,” says an 
Arab authority. He visited his mother’s tomb some fifty years 
after her death, and wept there, because, as he believed, God 
1 ad forbidden him to pray for her. Toward his family he was 
most affectionate. lie was indulgent to his inferiors, and 
would never allow his awkward little page to be scolded, what¬ 
ever he did. “I served him from the time I was eight years 
old,” says his servant Anas, “and he never spoke harshlj- to 
me, though I spoiled much.” He was easy of approach to all, 
even as “the river-bank to him who drawetli water therefrom.” 
He often speaks in his own condemnation for errors committed; 
for instance, being one day engaged in earnest conversation 
w th a powerful Koreishite, whose conversion he much desired, 
he was approached by a poor blind man, who, unable to see 
that Mohammed was otherwise engaged, exclaimed: “Teach 


MOHAMMED. 


331 


me, O Apostle of God, some part of what God lias taught thee.” 
Irritated by this interruption, Mohammed frowned and turned 
away from him. But his conscience soon smote him for having 
postponed the poor and humble for the rich and powerful. 
The next day’s Sura is known by the significant title, “He 
Frowned,” and reads thus: 

“The Prophet frowned and turned aside. 

Because the blind man came unto him. 

And how knowest thou whether he might not have been cleansed 
from his sins, 

Or whether he might have been admonished, and profited thereby? 
As for the man that is rich. 

Him thou receivest graciously; 

And thou carest not that he is not cleansed. 

But as for him that cometh unto thee earnestly seeking his salvation, 
And trembling anxiously, him dost thou neglect — 

By no means shouldst thou act thus.” 

And ever after this, whenever the Prophet saw the blind 
man Abdallah, he went out of his way to do him honor, say¬ 
ing, “ The man is thrice welcome on whose account my Lord 
hath reprimanded me,” and he made him twice Governor of 
Medina. 

Take one instance more. It is a memorable one; and we 
adduce it for the purpose of further showing that whenever 
through his own weakness the Prophet fell into error, he was 
the first to speak in his own condemnation, though the whole 
Mussulman world was witness to his humiliation. Once, in a 
moment of despondency, he made a partial concession to idola¬ 
try, for the purpose of winning over the recalcitrant Koreisliites 
to his religion, by intimating that their gods might make inter¬ 
cession with the Supreme God: 

xt What think ye of Al-Lat, and Al-Uzza, and Manah, the third 
besides ? 

They are the exalted Females, and their intercession with God may 
be hoped for.” 

Upon this the whole tribe of the Koreish signified their wil¬ 
lingness to come over to the side of the Prophet. His followers, 
seeing the- immense advantage he had gained, would have 


332 


MOHAMMED. 


passed the matter over as quietly as possible; but Mohammed,, 
perceiving that he had mistaken expediency for duty, would not 
allow that. He would recall the concession at all hazards, as 
publicly as he had made it, even though he should be charged 
with weakness and imposture thereby; and the Sura was 
altered to read thus: 

“ What think ye of Al-Lat, and Al-Uzza, and Manali, the third 
besides ? 

They are naught but empty names which ye and your fathers have 
invented .” 

It is claimed by many that a steady moral declension may 
be traced from the time that the fugitive of Mecca entered 
Medina in triumph, but such a charge is plain \y at variance 
with the known facts in the case. The external conditions of 
his life were changed, but how little did he change to meet 
them! He yielded, ’tis true, to the political necessities of his 
position, but his true character remained the same throughout. 
To those who believe that ambition was Ins aim, let them con¬ 
trast the triumphant entry of the Prophet into Mecca with that 
of Marius or Sulla into Rome, comparing all the antecedent 
and subsequent circumstances in either. If ever he had an am¬ 
bition to gratify, if revenge had been his purpose — if, indeed, 
he had worn a mask at all, then would he have thrown it off. 
“Truth is come — let falsehood disappear,” he said, when after 
his long exile from his native city he reentered the Caaba, and 
with his own hands destroyed the idols of the Koreisli; not one 
did he spare —even the famous Hobal crumbled, and at Al-Lut 
and Al-Uzza bowed at the advance of the Prophet. In his treat¬ 
ment of the unbelieving city he was true to his programme. 
There was no slaughter, no wanton revenge; and throughout he 
displayed the greatest moderation and magnanimity. 

Much has been said of Mohammed propagating his religion 
by the force of arms; and, indeed, it is generally understood by 
those who gain their information from Christian sources, that- 
Islam was established solely by the sword, and by doing vio¬ 
lence to the consciences of the people. “The sword, indeed, but 
where did it get the sword?” pithily asks Carlyle. Mohammed, 
with the few he had gained at Mecca and Iatreb by his preach- 


MOHAMMED. 


333 


ing, was not in a condition to conquer all Arabia, nor by force 
to draw such a multitude to his religion. True, he did not dis¬ 
dain the sword when he became able to wield it, but the use 
made of it was not such as commonly represented. Violence 
had some place, but certainly persuasion had more. Mohammed 
used the sword solely for the extirpation of idolatry, and when 
it had accomplished its purpose he threw it away. Indeed, 
there was no occasion for its further use, for the inarch of the 
Faith had anticipated the march of the army of the Faithful. 

The use of the sword as a proselyting agent is not defensible 
in any case, but Mohammed is not to be too severely con¬ 
demned for the use he made of it. The sole desire of his heart 
was to rescue his countrymen from idolatry, and restore the 
worship of the true God. He believed it his duty to use the 
means placed in his power — that 

“- the sword must first 

The darkling prison-house of mankind burst, 

Ere Peace can visit them, or Truth let in 
Her wakening daylight on a world of sin.” 

A comparison of the early histories of Islam and Chris¬ 
tianity, and the means used by their adherents for the spread 
of their respective faiths, could not but prove both interesting 
and instructive. Islam triumphed, as we have seen, and became 
a religion militant during the lifetime of its founder. Christi¬ 
anity during the lifetime of Jesus and the early fathers of the 
Church was almost an unknown sect, and not until the fourth 
century did it gain sufficient power to become aggressive, 
when in the person of the crimson-handed Constantine it com¬ 
passed the throne of the Caesars and assumed imperial power. 
But though sufficiently strong to give a master to the Empire, 
Christianity was never able to destroy the preexisting paganism 
of Rome. The issue of the conflict was an amalgamation of 
the principles of both. The worship of Diana of Ephesus was 
succeeded by that of the Virgin Mary; the deification of heroes 
was changed to the canonization of saints; and in pagan tem¬ 
ples and before pagan shrines the followers of the meek and 
lowly Jesus bowed in worship. Contrast this incestuous union, 
to which Christianity now owes its continued existence, with 



334 


MOHAMMED. 


the course taken by the Prophet of Arabia, who spread his own 
doctrines without adulteration, and repeatedly refused to listen 
to offers of compromise; “Not one unripe date,” he answered, 
when, in his darkest hour, a powerful tribe offered to join his 
standard and embrace Islam if he would but excuse them from 
the obligation of prayer. 

Christianity, we are told, is the religion of love, while Islam 
is the religion of the sword. Such a statement is consistent 
only with the grossest ignorance of history. Mohammed had 
recourse to the sword, it is true, but did not Christianity use 
the same meaus as soon as it obtained sufficient power, and to 
the fullest extent of that power? Throughout its entire history 
persuasion and example were used only when more forcible 
means were beyond its reach. Did Charlemagne convert the 
Saxons by preaching and example, or did Otto the Great instil 
Christianity into the Sclavonian tribes along the Baltic by 
milder means than Mohammed used ? The student of facts 
well knows that the history of the Christian Church is but a. 
record of wars and persecutions for opinion’s sake. “ Blood, 
blood,” says Baxter, “stains every page.” The Mediaeval 
Papacy was never backward in unfurling the standard of 
religious war. Ethelbert, in his conversion of the Danes, and 
King Olaf of Norway, in propagating Christianity throughout 
his dominions, used the sword with vigor, and the success of 
the Spaniards in christianizing Mexico and Peru was -due to 
the force of arms. When we recall the Crusades in which no 
less than sixty millions lost their lives, the Spanish Inquisi¬ 
tion, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the sack of Magdeburg 
by Tilly, the persecution of the Manicheans in Greece, the 
slaughter of forty-five hundred pagan Saxons by that “greatest 
of Christian emperors,” the expatriation of the Moorish nation 
from Spain — when we remember the answer of the Papal 
legate in the war of extermination against the Albigenses, by 
which he sought to quiet the scruples of a too conscientious 
general, “Kill all; God will know his own,” we are led to ask 
in wo der and amazement, “Is this, then, the boasted religion 
of love?” In the wars of Islam the total number of lives lost 
is stated by the best authorities to be about 1,5'J0,000, while in 
the Christian wars and persecutions the lowest estimate ia 


MOHAMMED. 335 

150,000,000. Compare these figures and then say which is best 
deserving to be called the religion of the sword. 

In this connection it must be remembered that neither 
Mohammed nor his successors ever resorted to persecution, nor 
were their wars internecine. Even on the field of battle the 
conquering Mussulman allowed his conquered foe the two other 
alternatives of conversion or tribute. 

Space will not allow us to speak at length of his social and 
political reforms, yet it may be said that in them all is a ten¬ 
dency for good; they are the true dictates of a heart aiming 
for what is just and true. Slavery he opposed, and declared the 
seller of men to be an outcast of humanity; but shivery in tho 
East is a patriarchal institution, coeval with the dawn of his¬ 
tory, and it was beyond the power of legislation to abolish 
it; he therefore did what he could for the social elevation of 
the slaves and made laws for their better treatment. Intoxica¬ 
tion and the use of wines were prohibited by the Koran, and 
to this day the law is strictly observed by all Moslems. Poly¬ 
gamy, also a patriarchal institution, he allowed, but modified 
the laws regarding it and mitigated its worst evils. In all his 
reforms he showed true wisdom and a desire to improve the 
social and political condition ol the people. True, his laws, 
were not always perfect, but they tended toward perfection. 
Solon remarked of his own legislation that, while his laws were 
not the best he could devise, still they were the best the Athen¬ 
ians were able to receive — a remark which will apply to the 
Arabian reformer as well. 

Mohammed was not a vain metaphysician, nor did he pretend 
to supernatural knowledge or power. His theology was simple, 
“There is but one God/' and with a liberality to which he 
Avorld has become a stranger, he admitted the salvation of men 
of any form of faith, provided their lives were pure. He labor¬ 
ed solely to restore the primitive faith of Abraham as opposed 
to polytheism. And what was the faith of Abraham ? Point¬ 
edly and pregnantly answers the Koran, “Abraham was a good 
man and no idolater/* The term “Mohammedanism/' often 
used as an appelative of the religion preached by Mohammed, 
is a misnomer. The name was never used by the Prophet or 
his earlier disciples, and it has always been rejected by his fol- 


336 


MOHAMMED. 


lowers. To again quote the words of Abu Bekr: “ It was not 
Mohammed, but the God of Mohammed ” that the Prophet 
taught his followers to worship. The creed is Islam, a verbal 
noun, meaning “submission to” and “faith in God.” A calm 
resignation and a pious submission to his unchangable will are 
the more prominent features of Islam. It does not, therefore, 
teach a man to be habitually whining about the throne of 
grace, begging for the gratification of real or imaginary needs, 
nor is it accompanied by the belief that the infinite chain of 
alternate cause and effect can be broken for the gratification of 
any one, however importunate he may be. In this regard 
Islam shows a striking contrast to the Christian doctrine. 
Believing that there is no such thing as law in the government 
of the world, and convinced of incessant interference of provi¬ 
dence, the Christian seeks by prayers and entreaties to prevail 
upon God to change the current of affairs. The prayer of the 
Christian, therefore, is mainly an intercession for benefits hoped 
for, that of the Moslem a devout expression of gratitude for 
the past. 

Of that most wonderful book, the Koran, which presents with 
vivid power what is now the life belief of the Mohammedan 
world, it does not fall within the scope of the present work to 
speak at length. Well might Goethe say that “as often as we 
approach it, it always proves repulsive anew; gradually, how¬ 
ever, it attracts, it astonishes, and, in the end, forces into admi¬ 
ration.” 

To the Arab nation the establishment of Islam was a birtu 
from darkness into light; it was the parent of the glorious 
Saracenic Empire — the guardian of the arts, which, by preserv¬ 
ing the spark of civilization during the Dark Ages, furnished 
the light which has since illumined the world. It was the 
Arabs who first called the muses from their ancient seats; 
who developed the sciences of astronomy and agriculture, and 
created those of chemistry and algebra; who adorned t ,eir 
c.ties with colleges and libraries, who supplied Europe with a 
school of philosophers from Cordova, and a school of physi¬ 
cians from Salerno. 

The history of the Mohammedan Empire has no parallel in 
the world’s annals. It overran Asia from the Euphrates to the 


MOHAMMED. 


337 


•Ganges. The crescent outshone the sun in Africa. The Holy- 
City was theirs, and the strong sword of Richard Coeur de 
Leon was broken by the scimeter of Saladin. They crossed the 
straits which connect the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and 
gave a name to the world’s greatest fortress. They overpowered 
the sturdy Goths in Spain, and their capital at Cordova rivaled 
Bagdad in the splendor of its court, the depth of its learning, 
and the magnificence of its architecture. They crossed the 
Pyrenees and penetrated France; crossing the Bosphorus they 
crushed the Eastern Empire, and, making Constantinople their 
capital, battered at the walls of Vienna, alarming Christendom, 
and calling from the Pope a proclamation which showed that 
the Christian Church feared its own overthrow. Indeed, from 
its most glorious seats Christianity was forever expelled; from 
Palestine, the scene of its most sacred recollections; from Asia 
Minor, that of its first churches; from Egypt, whence issued the 
great doctrine of the Trinity; and from Carthage, who imposed 
her belief on Europe. 

In its grasp are still the cradles of the Jewish and Christian 
-faiths, and the spots most dear to both —Mount Sinai and the 
cave of Machpelah, the Church of the Nativity and the Church 
of the Holy Sepulchre. 

Islam is now the only progressive religion upon earth. The 
Sword, the Bible, and the Cross, have been obliged to give way 
before the Scimeter, the Koran, and the Crescent. Islam is still 
a proselyting power, while Christianity, having run its feeble 
•course, must soon yield to the advance of modern civilization. 
Like all other forms of religion, however, Islam must in time 
pass away, but its influence will be felt, and it will bear fruit 
to future generations when Christianity shall have become lost 
in the fables of a superstitious past. 

Regarding the character of the founder of Islam and the 
Saracenic Empire enough has been said. He was a great man; 
one of the greatest the world has ever known, and high among 
the names of the world’s reformers and sages, that of Moham¬ 
med should be inscribed; and in the golden book of humanity 
he has indeed earned for himself a place. 


338 


HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. 


HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. 


While Christianity in the eighth century was spreading its 
baleful blight throughout the Wes', enveloping Europe in the 
midnight of the Dark Ages, the rays of learning and the arts 
of peace were illuminating the lands of the Saracens. While 
benighted Christendom was being shrouded in the black pall of 
ignorance and superstition, the Arabs in the East were reviving 
aud adding lustre to that literature and c lassic civilization of 
olden Greece which had burst forth in such marvelous mag¬ 
nificence from the cities of ancient Attica. “When Europe 
was hardly more enlightened than Caffraria is now, the Sara¬ 
cens were cultivating and even creating science.” [“Draper’s 
Intellectual Development,” p. 306.] While the religion of Jesus 
Christ was plunging the Western world into the lowest depths 
of darkness and degradation, the Arabians were cultivating 
those arts and sciences which expand the mind, refine the 
taste, and give polish to society. At a period when the capi¬ 
tals of Christian Europe were inhabited by barbarous hordes, 
Bagdad and Damascus offered asylums to the learned of every 
land. While illiterate and cruel Christian monks were eras¬ 
ing from olden parchments the rarest philosophical writings 
of Greece, the Mohammedans of Arabia were translating Latin, 
Greek, and Persian literature, founding libraries, and endowing 
institutions of learning in every town, and expending the reve¬ 
nue of kingdoms in public buildings and fine arts. 

Speaking of the earlier sovereigns of Bagdad, Hallam says: 
“Their splendid palaces, their numerous guards, their treasures 
of gold and silver, the populou^ness and wealth of their cities, 
formed a striking contrast to the rudeness and poverty of the 
Western nations. In their Court, learning was held in honor; 
the stars were numbered, the course of the planets was meas¬ 
ured ; the Arabians improved upon the science they borrowed, 
and returned it with abundant interest to Europe in the com- 


HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. 


339 


munication of numeral figures, and the intellectual language of 
Algebra.” 

First among the illustrious sovereigns of Bagdad during the 
most brilliant period of its wealth, and luxury, and learning, 
was Haroun-al-Raschid (or Aaron the Just). This renowned 
caliph, the principal hero of the “Arabian Night’s Entertain¬ 
ments,” was a son of the caliph Mahdee, of the celebrated 
dynasty of the Abassides. He was born in Media, 765, and suc¬ 
ceeded his elder brother as the fifth caliph, in 786. He had 
already acquired immense popularity by his victories over the 
Greeks, and had made the Empress Irene, of Constantinople, a 
tributary of the caliphate. He raised the empire of the Arabs 
to its highest pitch of grandeur, uniting the talents of a phi¬ 
losopher to those of a conqueror, and making his court the 
great center of letters in the Eas . He not only promoted liter¬ 
ature and science, but he was himself a poet, being often 
moved to tears by the recital of poetry. His reign was the 
Augustan era of the Arabian dominion, and his imaginative 
subjects have celebrated it as the age of enchantment and 
miracle. 

After the death of the Byzantine Empress, Irene, Haroun 
humbled his successor, the Emperor Nicephorus, still more 
deeply; made immense conquests among the Turks and other 
tribes of Asia, and subjugated the disaffected sects in his hered¬ 
itary dominions. He died in 809, leaving his vast possessions 
divided under his three sons. During his splendid reign the 
country of the Arabs abounded with celebrated philosophers, 
physicians, and astronomers, whose names have been like 
bright ornaments in the annals of mankind through the suc¬ 
ceeding ages. 

In the West, at this epoch, the great Roman world was 
being subjugated to the sacerdotal sway of Christianity. Char¬ 
lemagne, the “Eldest Son of the Church,” was establishing by 
the sword the successor of St. Peter upon the throne of the 
Caesars, and slaughtering unbaptised Saxons in the name of 
Jesus Christ. This “ greatest of the Christian kings ” was 
notorious for his crimes and immoralities. 

Though he already had nine wives ; nd many concubines, 
he sought to increase the former by a martiage with Irene the 


310 HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. 

infamous Christian Empress of the East, who put out the eyes 
of her own son in the porphyry chamber of Constantinople. 
At Yerden, 782, he butchered in one day 4,500 persons who 
refused the rite of baptism. The kings and clergy of the Chris¬ 
tian West were better used to the sword than the pen. Charle¬ 
magne himself never succeeded in learning to write, and among 
the ecclesiastics of his time but very few knew how to read, 
scarcely any how to address a common letter of salutation. It 
was the Age of Faith in Europe. The sword was the effectual 
missionary for the propagation of the cause of Christ. The native 
people of Christian Europe, not yet entirely emerged from a 
state of barbarism, were still clad in garments of untanned skins, 
and d v, elt in huts in which it was a mark of wealth if there were 
bulrushes on the floor and straw mats against the walls. The 
sovereigns of Germany, France, and England, lived in cheerless, 
chimneyless, windowless dwellings, not much better than the 
wigwams of the Indians. All the Christian West was degraded 
and darkened and distracted by a base theology, and the bloody 
disputes of brutal bigots. At this lime the realms of Islam pre¬ 
presented a picture of unrivalled culture and magnificence. In 
Arabia it was the age of learning, elegance and refinement. 
Literary treasures and relics of Grecian glory were brought to 
the foot of the throne at Bagdad. Haroun-al-Baschid had Homer 
translated into Syriac, and, with a Mohammedan liberality which 
was in striking contrast with the intolerance of Christendom, 
he conferred the superintendence of his numerous schools upon 
a Nestorian Christian. It was a Mohammedan maxim that the 
real learning of a man is of more public importance than any 
particular religious opinions he may entertain. In 801 Haroun 
sent Charlemagne, as a mark of esteem from the commander of 
the Faithful to the greatest of Christian kings, a silver clock of 
rare value and curious workmanship which struck the hours. 
At this period, while Europeans were living in huts, the inhab¬ 
itants of Islam were enjoying the luxuries and prodigalities of 
an Oriental civilization which has never been surpassed; the 
caliphs were living in magnificently decorated palaces, with 
polished marble balconies and overhanging orange gardens 
adapted to the purposes of luxury and ease. Splendid flowers 
and rare exotics ornamented the court yards, while fountains of 


HAROUN-AL-RASCHID. 


341 


quicksilver shot up in glistening spray, the glittering particles 
falling with a tranquil sound like fairy bells. From the ceiling, 
corniced with fretted gold hung enormous chandeliers; clusters 
of frail marble columns surprised the beholder with their pre¬ 
cious weights, and the furniture of the vast and sumptuously 
tapestried apartments was of sandal and citron wood, elegantly 
inlaid with gold or silver or mother-of-pearl. 

The Arabians were the depositories of science during the 
long ages of Christian darkness and degradation, and it was 
among the Mohammedan Arabs, whose religion did not make 
war on knowledge, that appeared the first gleams of light 
w T hich shot athwart the horizon of Christian Europe. It was 
the Mohammedan Arabs who disinterred the treasures of pagan 
antiquity from the dust of the centuries, and with an imparted 
lustre of their own, transmitted them on for the profit of the 
succeeding ages. It was from the court of Haroun-al-Raschid 
that a taste for learning and the elegant amenities of Asiatic 
civilization spread into the adjoining countries. Mohammedan 
schools of science were the chief agencies in resuscitating the 
dormant energies of the dark and ecclesiastical ages. Not till 
Arabian science and classical freethought and industrial inde¬ 
pendence broke the sceptre of the Christian Church did the 
intellectual revival of Europe commence. 

It has been said that the Arabs overran the domains of 
science as quickly as they overran the realms of their neigh¬ 
bors. Some cf their current maxims show how much liter¬ 
ature was esteemed by them. “The ink of the doctor is 
more valuable than the blood of the martyr.” “Paradise is as 
much for him who has rightly used the pen, as for him vrho 
has fallen by the sword.” “The world is sustained by three 
things only: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great 
and the valor of the brave.” “Eminence in science is the 
highest of honors.” “He dies not who gives his life to learn¬ 
ing.” It is to the liberalizing and elevating influences of those 
sciences and arts, and those pursuits of industries patronized 
and protected in the “golden prime” of Haroun-al-Raschid — 
the age of Saracenic glory — that Europe is indebted for its 
redemption from the cursed and crushing thralldom of Christian 
ignorance and degradation! 


342 


AVEBBOES, 


AVERROES. 

Averroes, the common form of the name of Ibn-Roshd, was 
one of the most famous of all the Arabian physicians and 
philosophers. He was born in 1120 at Cordova, the capital of 
the Moorish dominions in Spain. He succeeded his father in 
the chief magistracy of Cordova. He was afterwards nominated 
chief judge to Morocco, but, appointing deputies to his office, 
he returned to Spain. He also exercised the office of cadi at 
Seville. While at Morocco he enjoyed a high degree of favor 
at the court of Aboo-al-Mansoor Billah. 

The libera'ity of his opinions caused him to be persecuted 
by the more orthodox Moslems, and he was imprisoned; but 
after doing penance for his opinions he w T as liberated. 

He was a great admirer of Aristotle, and his celebrated com¬ 
mentaries on the writings of that philosopher procured for him 
in the Middle Ages the title of “The Commentator.” He is 
referred to by Dante, in the “Inferno,” as “Averroes who 
wrote the great commentary.” 

His works are extremely numerous. He wrote on medicine, 
theology, law, logic, etc. Some of his writings have been trans¬ 
lated into Latin and Hebrew. Renan regards him as the high¬ 
est type of the “learned Mussulman.” It has been said that 
in medicine, philosophy, and astronomy, he knew what Galen, 
Aristotle, and the Almagest knew. Like every Mohammedan, 
he cultivated jurisprudence; and like every distinguished Ara¬ 
bian, he was devoted to poetry. He seems to have been a more 
devout believer in the philosophy of Aristotle than in the 
religion of Mohammed. In his old age he was denounced as a 
traitor to religion and was expelled from Spain. He died at 
Morocco in 119S. 

He had many disciples, especially in Italy, who were denom¬ 
inated Averroists. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
Averroism had silently made its way into France, Germany, 
and England. The writings of Averroes were first made known 


AVERROES. 


343 


to Christian Europe by the translation of Michael Scot in the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. Among the most cultured 
scholars, and especially among the Jews of that age, Averroes 
had completely supplanted his great master. Aristotle had 
passed away, and his great commentator had taken his place. 
His doctrines were current in all the colleges of the Caliphates 
and in all the universities of Europe. So numerous were the 
converts to his doctrine of emanation in Christendom, that 
Pope Alexander IY in 1255 found it necessary to interfere. 
He ordered Albertus Magnus to compose a work against the 
heretical teachings of the Moorish philosopher. Even Dante 
denounced Averroes as the author of a most dangerous system. 
But the most illustrious antagonist that was pitted against him 
was St. Thomas Aquinas, “the Angelic Doctor,” the distin¬ 
guished destroyer of such heresies as were entertained by 
Averroes. 

The most celebrated of the heretical books which appeared 
iji the Middle Ages was the “De Tribus Impostoribus.” This 
work was imputed to Averroes. In fact, all the infidelity of the 
times was imputed to the great commentator. The Domini¬ 
cans, who, at this time, armed with the weapons of the Inquis¬ 
ition, were terrifying Christian Europe with their unrelenting 
persecutions, directed their wrath against all inclined to Aver- 
roistic views. The theological odium of all the dominant 
religions was put upon Averroes. He was pointed out as t ^e 
originator of the blasphemous maxim that “all religions are 
false, although a'l are probably useful.” An attempt was made 
at the council of Vienna to have his writings absolutely sup¬ 
pressed, and to forbid all Christians reading them. The Lateran 
Council in 1512 condemned the abettors of the doctrines of the 
great Spanish Mohammedan, and all Christendom was agitated 
with disputes pertaining to his heresies. To the Italian paint¬ 
ers he was the emblem of unbelief. Most of the towns had 
pictures or frescoes of the Day of Judgment and of Hell, in 
which Averroes invariably appeared. In one at Pisa he figured 
with Arius, Mohammed, and Antichrist. In another he was 
.represented as overthrown by St. Thomas. 

The following is a short summary of the central doctrines of 
Averroes, and which, to a great extent had been derived from 


344 


AVERRO ES. 


Aristotle. There is a vast spiritual existence pervading the 
Universe, even as there is a vast existence of matter pervading* 
it—a spirit which, to quote the words of a great German, 
“sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal, and awakes in man. ,v 
From this spiritual existence, designated “the Active Intellect ,” 
the soul of man emanated, as a rain-drop comes from the sea, 
and after a season returns. The universal, or active intellect,, 
is uncreated, impassible, incorruptible, and has neither begin¬ 
ning nor end. It is altogether separate from matter. It is, as, 
it were, a cosmic principle. This oneness of the active intellect,, 
or reason, is the essential principle of the Averroistic theory, 
and is in harmony with the cardinal doctrine of Moham¬ 
medanism—the unity of God. The individual intellect is an 
emanation from the universal, and constitutes what is termed 
the soul of man. In one sense it is perishable and ends with, 
the body, but in a higher sense it endures; for after death it 
returns to, or is absorbed in the universal soul, and thus of all 
human souls there remains at last but one—the aggregate of: 
them all. Life is not the property of the individual, but belongs 
to Nature. The end of man is to enter into union more and 
more complete with the active intellect — reason. In that the 
happiness of the -soul consists. Our destiny is quietude. It was. 
his opinion that the transition from the individual to the uni¬ 
versal is instantaneous at death. 

Such, in brief, are the views of Averroes, which overran 
Europe in the Middle Ages, and whl h were zealously sustained 
by the Franciscans in Paris and the cities of Northern Italy. 
They were maintained in the University of Padua until the 
seventeenth century. The Roman Church, regarding them as 
detestable heresies, and doctrines in dangerous conflict with its 
most cherished dogmas, has spared no pains to root them out 
and destroy them; but notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
papacy to suppress them, and although they were anathema¬ 
tized by the Vatican Council but a few years since, they are? 
still upheld by a large portion of the race. 


ROGER BACON. 


345 


ROGER BACON. 

This celebrated English philosopher and monk was born in 
Somersetshire, about 1214. A:ter having been educated at Oxford 
and Paris, he took the vows of the Franciscan order at Oxford, 
and found a liberal patron in the Bishop of Lincoln. He was 
profoundly versed in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, metaphysics, theol¬ 
ogy, philosophy, and several sciences; and his learning and 
skill in mechanics were so great that he was suspected of deal¬ 
ing in magic. He wrote in Latin many works on astronomy, 
chemistry, optics, physics, theology, magic, etc. “ The mind 
of Roger Bacon,” says Hallam, “was strangely compounded 
of almost prophetic gleams of the future course of science and 
the best principles of the inductive philosophy, with a more 
than usual credulity in the superstitions of his time.” It is 
said he was the inventor of spectacles. He described the true 
theory of telescopes and microscopes. He foresaw the greatest 
of all inventions in practical astronomy — the measurement of 
angles by optical means. He proposed the swift propulsion of 
ships and carriages by merely mechanical means, and even 
speculated upon the possibility of making a flying machine. 
He i ells us there is one kind of air that will extinguish a flame, 
thereby showing his knowledge of gases. He showed that air 
was necessary for the support of fire, and was the author of 
the well-knawn experiment of proving the same, and it is 
almost positive he was acquainted with the explosive nature of 
gunpowder. But still, he prated a great deal about making 
and transmuting metals, etc. And yet how very clear his 
views were for his age, and how significant his famous expres¬ 
sion, that “the ignorant mind cannot sustain the truth!” The 
Ignorant Mind could not bear this. He was in 1278 brought 
before a council of Franciscans, who condemned his writings 
and committed him to prison, in which he was confined ten 
years! He had been accused of magical practices and com¬ 
merce with Satan during the life of Pope Clement IV., who, to 


-346 


ROGER BACON. 


his honor, be it said, was his friend, because somewhat friendly 
to progress. The philosophic friar then escaped without public 
penalties. But under the pontificate of Nicholas III., the accu¬ 
sation of magic, astrology, and selling himself to the Devil 
was again pressed, one point being that he had proposed to 
-construct astronomical tables for the purpose of predicting 
future events. Apprehending the worst, he tried to defend him¬ 
self by his composition “Concerning the Nullity of Magic,” in 
which he declared: “Because these things are beyond your 
comprehension, you call them the works of the Devil!” 

But this was all in vain! To prison he was consigned, and 
there, as we have already said, he remained for ten long years, 
until, completely broken down in health, he was released by 
the intercession of some high personages, who took pity on him. 
He died in his seventy-eighth year. On his death-bed he was 
forced to utter the melancholy complaint: “I repent now that 
I have given myself so much trouble for the love of science!” 

To him the following beautiful and truthful lines are pecul¬ 
iarly applicable: 

“Plod in tliy cave, gray anchorite! 

Be wiser than thy peers. 

Augment the range of human power, 

And trust to coming years. 

They may call thee wizard and monk accursed. 

And load thee with dispraise ; 

Thou wert born five hundred years too soon 
For the comfort of thy days; 

But not too soon for human kind:— 

Time hath reward in store; 

And the demons of our sires become 
The saints that we adore. 

The blind can see — the slave is lord; 

So round and round we run, 

And ever the wrong is proved to be wrong, 

And ever is justice done.” 


COPERNICUS. 


347 


COPERNICUS. 

Nicholas Copernicus was born at Thorn, in Prussia, in Feb¬ 
ruary, 1473. After having made himself master of Greek and 
Latin at home, he went to Cracow where he devoted himself to 
the study of philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. 
He afterwards became doctor of medicine in the university. 

At the age of twenty-three he visited Ita’y, and obtained at 
Borne a chair of mathematics, which he filled with great repu¬ 
tation for several years. He subsequently returned to his 
native country, and was appointed canon of Frauenburg by his 
uncle, the Bishop of Warmia. Being now in possession of a 
comfortable fortune, he diligently applied himself to improve 
the science of astronomy. Here he passed the remainder of his 
days, a quiet and grave man, deeply immersed in astronomical 
researches, while healing the poor by his medical knowledge. 
The result of his solitary studies here afterwards appeared in 
his great work entitled “ The Kevolutions of the Celestial Orbs,” 
which he completed about 1533. In this work he overturned 
the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and established for himself 
an enduring fame. Although he was fully convinced that he 
had solved the grandest problem which pertains to astronomy, 
he delayed to publish his work from a presentiment of the per¬ 
secution reserved for discoverers and reformers. He retained 
the manuscript of his great work in his possession for many 
years before he would permit its publication. 

Says the “Cyclopedia of Biography,” in its notice of Coper¬ 
nicus:—“His great work (in which he represente 1 the sun as 
occupying a center around which the earth and the other plan¬ 
ets revolve) remained in manuscript some years after he had 
completed it, so diffident was he as to the reception it might 
meet w T ith; and it was only a few hours before his death that a 
printed copy was presented to him, giving him assurance that 
his opinions would see the light, though he would be beyond 
the reach of censure and persecution.” 


348 


COPERNICUS. 


Says Hallam: “The whole weight of Aristotle’s name, which 
in the sixteenth century not only biassed the judgment but 
engaged the passions, connected as it was with general orthodoxy 
and preservation of established systems, was thrown into the 
scale against Copernicus.” 

Copernicus escaped the bigotry which the church would have 
exercised toward him had he lived longer. His system of 
astronomy was not received with anything like general appro¬ 
bation for a hundred years or more after his death; for when 
in 1615 and 1633, Galileo taught the same theory, the blind and 
furious bigotry of the monks so persecuted him that he was* 
twice thrown into the Inquisition and compelled by force to 
abjure a system of astronomy to-day accepted by the Christian 
world. 

In his preface, addressed to Pope Paul III. Copernicus’ 
writes: “Then I too began to meditate on the motion of the 
earth, and, though it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I 
knew that in previous times others had been allowed the privi¬ 
lege of feigning what circles they chose in order to explain the 
phenomena, I conceived that I might take the liberty of trying 
whether, on the supposition of the earth’s motion, it was possi¬ 
ble to find better explanations than the ancient ones of the 
revolutions of the celestial orbs. Having, then, assumed the 
motions of the earth, which are hereafter explain d, by labori¬ 
ous and long observation I at length found that, if the motions 
of the other planets be compared with the revolution of the 
earth, not only their phenomena follow from the suppositions, 
but also that the several orbs and the whole system are so con¬ 
nected in order and magnitude that no one point can be trans¬ 
posed without disturbing the rest, and introducing confusion, 
into the whole universe.” 

He introduces his doctrine by the apologetic statement that, 
he had kept his book for thirty-six years, and only now pub¬ 
lished it at the entreaty of Cardinal Schomberg. 

Copernicus clearly recognized, not only the relative position 
of the earth, but also her relative magni:ude. He says the 
magnitude of the world is so great that the distance of the 
earth from the sun has no apparent magnitude when compared 
with the sphere of the fixed stars. He attributed a triple. 


COPEENICUS. 


349 


motion to the earth —a daily motion on its axis, an annual 
motion around the sun, and a motion of declination of the axis. 
The latter seemed to be necessary to account for the constant 
-direction of the pole; but this was soon found to be a miscon¬ 
ception, and his theory was relieved of it. With this correction, 
the system of Copernicus was the most important advance ever 
made in the science of astronomy, though it has received some 
•modification since his time by the genius of Galileo, Newton, 
Kepler and o ; hers. Before Copernicus gave his system to the 
world, the general belief was that the sun moved around the 
-earth. Thus the Bible taught, and thus men had believed 
through all the ages of superstition. The system of Copernicus 
•disproved the position of Joshua, who said the sun stood still 
upon one occasion, by proving that it never moved at all. The 
progress of the science of astronomy has tended more than 
anything else to weaken faith in the Bible; and Copernicus 
may be properly regarded as the first scientific assailant of 
the Christian Scriptures. The Church moves slow on the road 
of progress and fights off a new truth or discovery as long as 
possible. Christians combatted the Copern can theory because 
it was in conflict with the Bible. Luther was a most bitter 
opponent of Copernicus. He called him an old fool; said he 
was tryii\g to upset the whole art of astronomy, and in refu ation 
of his theory appealed to the teachings of the Bible. And thus 
Christianity has long hindered scientific advancement by making 
the crude speculations of men in the early ages the authorita¬ 
tive standard. The tendency of science is to expose and destroy 
the errors of the Bible, and to exalt truth over superstition. 
And Copernicus, as a brave teacher of knowledge in an age of 
faith, and bigotry, and ignorance, should be held in ever asting 
honor as one of the best and noblest friends of man. 

“Extinguished theologians lie about the ciadle of every 
science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and 
history records that whenever s hence and orthodoxy have been 
fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the 
lis.s, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not 
slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. 
It learns not, neither can it forget.” [Huxley’s Lay Sermons, 
p. 278.] 


350 


TELESIO. 


TELESIO. 

The Italian Infidel, Bernardino Telesio, was the descendant 
of an illustrious family at Cozenza in Calabria, where he was 
born in the year 1509. He received his early education from his 
uncle at Milan, where he became the complete master of the 
Greek and Latin languages. In 1525 he accompanied his uncle 
to Borne and shared in the calamities which attended the sack 
and pillage of that city, where for some reason he was impris¬ 
oned for two months, and lost all he possessed. 

After his libera'ion he went to Padua, where he assiduously 
studied mathematics and philosophy, having refused, it is 
related, the office of tutor to the Infant Philip of Spain, and 
also the offer of an archbishopric made to him by Pius IV. 

In 1535 he again returned to Borne, where he formed an 
intimate acquaintance with many persons of distinguished char¬ 
acter, and where he published his two chief works on “Nature,” 
which met with unexpected applause. He was made Doctor of 
Philosophy, and passed several years in the society of the^ 
learned. He so ingratiated himself with Pope Pius IV. that he 
was offered the Archbishopric of Cosenza, which he declined 
himse.f a: d obtained for his brother. His numerous friends, 
and admirers induced him lo open a school of philosophy in 
Naples, which soon became famous, both for the number of its 
pupils, and for.its hostility to Plato and Aristotle as authorities 
on scientific questions. Telesio and his assistant professors 
were highly esteemed by those who were desirous of studying 
Nature rather than dialectics, and he was patronized by several 
great men, particularly by Ferdinand, Duke of Nuceri. But his. 
popularity brought upon him the envy of the “long-necked 
ge ese of the world, who are ever hissing dispraise, because their 
natures are little;” and his independence of mind provoked 
violent opposition from the orthodox teachers, especially from 
the monks, who loaded him and his school with calumny. 


TELESIO. 


c.:t 

He adopted Cosenza as his place of residence in his latter 
days, which were embittered by the loss of his wife and two 
children, one of whom was stabbed. He suffered much from 
the rancorous malignity of his opponents, and after his death, 
in 1596, his works were placed on the Index Expurgcitorius by 
Pope Clement Till. 

Telesio held, as the base of his system, that matter is inde¬ 
structible and ever the same in quantity, incapable alike of 
increase or diminution. He conceived matter to be inert and 
to be acted upon by the two contrary principles of heat and 
cold, from the perpetual operations of which arise all the sev¬ 
eral forms in nature. 

In 1565 he published a work on the “Nature of Things,” in 
which he asserts “that the construction of the world, and the 
magnitude and nature of the bodies contained in it, is not to 
be sought after by reasoning, as men in former times have 
done, but to be perceived by sense, and to be ascertained from 
the things themselves.” 

The right method of studying Nature is, he declares, inductive, 
proceeding upon a basis of ascertained facts, whence we ascend 
to the principles of things; and this method may be pursued 
fearlessly by all alike, by the slow as well as by the quick¬ 
witted, for “if there should turn out to be nothing divine or 
admirable, or very acute in our studies, yet these will at all 
events never contradict the things or themselves, seeing that we 
only use our sense to follow Nature, which is ever at harmony 
with herself, and is ever the same in her acts and operations.” 

At the time this old Italian philosopher was preaching in 
such unmistakable language the indispensableness of experi¬ 
ment, Lord Bacon had hardly emerged from long clothes. The 
great English philosopher makes honorable mention of Telesio, 
who, in language almost as clear and emphatic as his own, 
reprobated as chimerical the old method of studying nature. 

Although some of Telesio’s speculations are somewnat fanci¬ 
ful, yet his persistent attack on dogmatic authority, and his 
lucid exposition of the inductive method of physical research, 
•entitle him to our gratitude and admiration. 


SERVETUS. 


On the twenty-seventh day of October, 1553, upon a wide 
•elevation of ground called Champel, about two mil s from the 
city of Geneva, had congregated a great concourse of people. 
This eminence, commanding a view of the most magnificent 
scenery of Switzerland —the forest, verdure of the Jura moun¬ 
tains, vine-clad hills, and pleasant valleys, the winding courses 
of the Arve and the Rhone, and the shining glaciers of Savoy — 
was a place of execution; and upon this sunny and delightful 
day a learned and noble man was to be burned to a black and 
smoking carcass because of his belief. He differed in a matter 
of faith from the majority, and for this he must be changed to 
ashes at the bigot’s stake. Upon a block in front of a firmly, 
planted stake was seated the doomed heretic, with his neck and 
body bound by strong iron chains. Both the printed and man¬ 
uscript copy of a book is fastened to his body. Fire is touched 
to the pile of green oak wood upon which the green leaves are 
still hanging. The first flash of the fierce flames rises around 
the martyr, and his shrieks are so frightful that even the cal¬ 
lous and curious crowd draw back in terror. The damp oak 
burns slowly, and a strong wind prevents the free action of the 
fire. More wood is heaped upon the burning pile. Yainly 
the suffering victim implores a speedy death. For hours he 
slowly roasts, and the cruel Christian crowd witness the terrible 
spectacle. At last the merciless flames climb up and wrap his 
writhing form, envelop his white heroic face, and ere long all 
that is left of this human sacrifice upon the altar of Chris¬ 
tian intolerance is a charred and shriveled mass, which the 

4 

executioners turn with their pikes in the moulder ng fire. It is 
now noon, and the gloomy crowd turn back to the city. 

A heretic had been changed to ashes in the name of Jesus 
Christ. His only offense was that he believed in one God 
instead of three. Of this man’s personal history but little need 
be said. His biography is of little interest save what relates to 


SERYETUS. 


053 

his heresy and death. Michael Servetus was a Spanish theolo¬ 
gian and physician, born at Aragon in 1 03. His family name 
is said to have been Reves. He was educated for the profession 
of an advocate at Toulouse, but afterwards studied medicine at 
Paris, where he took his doctor’s degree. He held a corre¬ 
spondence with John Calvin on the dogma of the trinity—a 
dogma especially obnoxious to the learned and skeptical Serve¬ 
tus. In 1531 he published a work “On the Errors of the Trin¬ 
ity,” and which served to irritate the cold and cruel Calvin 
against him. He also published a medical work while at Paris. 

From Paris he went to Lyons, where he engaged in the 
practice of his profession. Here he held a doctrinal dispute 
with the great trinitarian tyrant of Geneva. At Vienne, in 1553, 
he published anonymously his “Christianity Restored.” For 
this he was brought to trial before the Inquisition of France 
for heresy against the Catholic Church. 

The man who had informed against him was John Calvin, 
then the Protestant pope of Switzerland. Servetus was pro¬ 
nounced guilty of the ecclesiastical crime and sentenced to 
death by burning. He contrived to escape, but his effigy and 
book were burnt by the magistrates of Vienne. 

“Pursued by the sleuth-hounds of intolerance he fled to 
Geneva lor protection. A dove flying from hawks sought 
safety in the nest of a vulture. This fugitive from the cruelty 
of Rome asked shelter from John Calvin, who had written a 
book in favor of religious toleration. Servetus had forgotten 
that this book was written by Calvin when in the minority; 
that it was written in weakness to be forgotten in power; that 
it was produced by fear instead of principle. He did not know 
that Calvin li^,d caused his arrest at Vienne, in France, and had 
sent a copy of his work, which was claimed to be blasphemous, 
to the archbishop. He did not then know that the Protestant 
Calvin was acting as cne of the detectives of the Catholic 
Church, and had been instrumental in procuring his conviction 
for heresy. Ignorant of all this unspeakable infamy, he put 
himself in the power of this very Calvin. The maker of the 
Presbyterian creed caused the fugitive Servetus to be arrested 
for blasphemy. He was tried. Calvin was his accuser. He was 
convicted and condemned to death by fire.” 


354 


3 EItVE T US. 


And tdius perished Michael Servetus, the most i lustrious vic¬ 
tim of Calvinistic persecution. Belief in one God brought upon 
him the judgment of death. This has been a crime the Church 
has never forgiven. Since its establishment by the crimson¬ 
handed Constantine, the Christian Church has never tolerated 
a man who believed in one God only, and that God a good one. 
Stakes and crosses were set up, inquisitions founded, and all the 
hellish engines of cruelty that human fiends could conjure up 
were invented, to torture and burn and destroy every theologi¬ 
cal pauper who could not be forced to accept of triune and 
council-manufactured Gods. 

As a bold and persistent heretic, a victim of Protestant fury 
and fanaticism in an age of cruelty and faith, as one who 
dared to speak and suffer and die in the grand cause of mental 
freedom, as a hero and a martyr, the learned Spanish doctor, 
Michael Servetus, rightfully claims a prominent place in our 
muster-roll of immortals. 

‘The white sown bones of heretics, wherever 
They sank beneath the Crusade’s holy spear,— 

Goa’s dark dungeons, — Malta’s sea-washed cell. 

Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung 
Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung, 

Heaven’s anthem blending with the shriek of hell! 

The midnight of Bartholomew,—the stake 
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame 
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva’s lake,— 

New England’s scaffold, and the priestly sneer 
Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear, 

When guilt itself a human tear might claim,— 

Bear witness, O thou wronged and merciful one! 

That earth’s most hateful crimes have in thy name been done!” 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


355 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


Few names in the annals of mankind live to-day in such 
lustrous letters, dowered with such spotless fame, associated 
with such noble and endearing qualities, as that of Giordano 
Bruno. Prominent in the vanguard of that heroic host who 
fell fighting for freedom of thought and utterance, he will 
excite the gratitude and admiration of mankind forever. Unique 
and brilliant, bold and grandly resolute, his handsome brows 
begirt with the ever radiant martyr’s crown, he stands forth in 
matchless majesty from the twilight of the sixteenth century, 
the dauntless defender of the indefeasible right of man to think 
for himself. Bruno, the Italian wanderer, will live forever in 
the world’s remembrance as the unvanquishable victim of 
Christian ferocity — the hero of Freethought. In 1548, ten years 
after the death of Copernicus, at Nola, one of the old cities of 
Magna Grecia, midway between Vesuvius and the Mediterran¬ 
ean, Bruno v*. as born. His baptismal name was Filippo. At 
the age of fifteen, after having attended the public classes at 
the college and the private lectures of the most celebrated 
professors, he became a novice in a monastery at Naples. Upon 
the adoption of ihe Dominican frock he changed the name of 
Filippo for that of Giordano. After his year’s novitiate had 
expired he took the monastic vows in the convent of San 
Domenico Maggiore, in which the celebrated saint, the subtle 
Thomas Aquinas had once lectured and elaborated his meta¬ 
physical system of religious philosophy. It was not long ere 
Bruno began to manifest heretical tendencies. His superiors 
were startled by his restless spirit of inquiry. Musing deeply 
upon all the problems of theology, despising the pomp and 
badges and baubles, the gaud and glitter, and ostentatious dis¬ 
play of saceidotal wealth and power, his doubts of the mys¬ 
teries of faith at last became so plainly apparent as to excite 
the apprehensions of the authorities. He not only questioned 
the absurdities of transubstantiation, but had the audacity to 


35G 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


attack the very pillars of faith—the most essential dogmas of 
the Church. 

An accusation was drawn up against him, which, in consid¬ 
eration of his youth, was finally withdrawn. At this time he 
was only sixteen. But his irrepressible skepticism at last 
became too flagrant for longer toleration. He discarded the 
doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. 
He scouted the venerated Aristotelian theory as I o the motion 
of the earth, and the Scripture notions as to the origin of man. 

The chiefs of his order had hitherto shown him leniency 
because of his brilliant talents. But now he became feared and 
persecuted. He had embraced the strange and startling astron¬ 
omy of Copernicus, and propagated belief in the plurality of 
worlds. His superiors for the third time commenced an invest¬ 
igation of his creed. This was eight years after the first accusa¬ 
tion had been brought against him. Knowing that he would 
not be able to withstand his implacable inquisitors, and that no 
mercy would now be shown him, he fled. He found refuge in a 
convent of his own order at Rome. But his powerful persecu¬ 
tors pursuing him with the accusation to the Holy City, after 
a few days sojourn, he fled from Italy. 

At the age of thirty he became an exile, and began his 
adventurous journeyings through Europe. Hastily passing to 
Padua, Genoa, and Geneva, the wandering scholar earned a 
living as he best could by teaching, and by his tracts on the 
“Signs of the Times.” At Noli he stayed five months, teach¬ 
ing grammar to children, and lecturing to men of letters. From 
thence he proceeded to Venice. He found the Queen of the 
Adriatic decimated by the plague, and overshadowed with 
gloom. Wretchedness and fear and squalor swayed their 
ghastly sceptres in every section of the once great gay city. 
We next hear of the ardent, restless Neapolitan at Milan, 
where he made the acquaintance of Sir Philip Sydney, the war¬ 
rior, wit and poet, the author of Arcadia, and the most con¬ 
summate flower of noble chivalry. The intimacy between the 
Italian wanderer and the gallant Knight of the court of Eliza¬ 
beth was afterwards renewed in England. 

Chambery next became Bruno s resting place; but the igno¬ 
rance, l.i o ry and brutality of the Savoyard monks soon dis- 


t 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


ZZ7 


gusted him, and he set out for Geneva, where he arrived in 

1576. He was welcomed there by another Italian refugee, like 
himself, an outcast from his native land for conscience’ sake. 
He earnestly besought Bruno to discard his monastic gown 
before appearing in public. Neither having money to buy a 
change of dress, Bruno contrived to make a pair of breeches of 
his Dominican dress; and his countryman providing him with 
a hat and cloak, he was at last attired in the garb of a 
citizen. 

A brief sojourn in the home of Protestantism satisfied 
Bruno that flight alone could save him from Servetus’ fate. He 
set out for Lyons, where, after making a short stop, he traveled 
on to Toulouse, arriving there about the middle of the year 

1577. This fair city of the South was then in the zenith of its 
prosperity. He was elected public lecturer to the University, 
which numbered at that time ten thousand scholars, all young 
and ardent, and all anxious to learn more of the strange new 
notions of astronomy taught by the wandering Italian. While 
there he held numerous public disputations, and composed sev¬ 
eral of his works. But ere long a storm was raised against 
him by the Aristotelians, who became enraged against him for 
having had the impious audacity to not only ridicule the logic 
of Aristotle, but to promulgate the eternal and universal revo¬ 
lution of the earth. Again he had to flee. 

In 1579 he reached P ris. Here he had the good fortune, not 
only to escape immediate butchery, but even to secure the 
protection and patronage of Henry III. who bestowed upon him 
the office of Lecturer Extraordinary to the University. 

Henry III. appreciated the erudition and genius of the poet 
and philosopher. Bruno charmed and startled the students of 
Paris by his daring novelties. Never since the time of Abelard 
had a teacher been so enthusias ically applauded. Young and 
handsome, eloquent and gay and brilliantly facetious, he capti¬ 
vated all whom he addressed, and gathered around him such an 
enthusiastic following as had never before been vouchsafed any 
professor in Paris. But the remorseless sleuth-hounds of the 
Inquisition were upon his track. And although countenanced 
by the king and admired by multitudes of the learned for his 
daring intellect and rhetorical power, yet his undisguised here- 


358 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


sies and his belief in the system of Copernicus at last made it 
unsafe for him to tarry longer in Paris. 

We now follow him to England. A friendly welcome awaited 
him at the court of Elizabeth. He brought with him letters 
from Henry III. to the French Ambassador in London. 

He was invited to read at Oxford. This university was the 
seat of the Aristotelian philosophy, and then as ever since was 
far behind the age. The big-wigged professors were horror- 
struck by the monstrous heresies of the eloquent lecturer 
regarding the nature of God, the indestructibility of matter, 
and the rotation and plurality of inhabited worlds. 

The best men of England were chosen to combat for Ptolemy 
and Aristotle against the Italian innovator. Fifteen times did 
Bruno stop the mouths of his pitiable adversaries. Silenced by 
his arguments the professors replied by persecution. His 
aggressive doctrines and superb audacity roused the opposition 
and malignancy of formidable foes. The Protestant Queen with 
all h r royal power could not protect a heretic. And so Bruno 
was obliged to quit England. 

Again he returned to Paris to court the favor of the Quartier 
Latin. He opened a public disputation, in which were discussed 
for three successive days, the great questions of science and 
Nature, the Universe, and the rotation of the earth. 

Such was his onslaught upon the cherished and established 
notions of the age, that he was again forced to flee. 

He next carried the spirit of innovation into the universities 
of Germany. In 1586 he matriculated in the university of Mar¬ 
burg; but permission to teach philosophy having been refused 
him, he caused his name to be struck off from the list of mem¬ 
bers, created a disturbance, insulted the rector in his own 
house, and then set off for Wittemburg. His simple declaration 
that he was a lover of wisdom served as a sufficient introduc¬ 
tion there. He was instantly enrolled among the academicians; 
and for nearly two years he taught at Wi temburg with noisy 
popularity. Admiring audiences listened to his stirring and 
enrapturing eloquence in this central city of Lutheranism— the 
“Athens of Germany” — as Bruno termed Wittemburg. But 
the restless, iconoclastic Italian could not remain in ease and 
quiet. He determined to carry his doctrines to other cities. 


gioeda:;o bhuno. 359 

The next step he took illustrates his unsurpassed audacity. 
He went to Prague —went from the very centre of Lutheranism 
right to the heart of Catholicism. He was introduced to the 
Emperor, Budolph II., who showed the utmost regard for the 
heretical philosopher. He wished to attach him to his court. 
But books were scarce, there were few opportunities for lectur¬ 
ing, and Bruno, impressed with the importance of his mission, 
could not tarry long at Prague. He passed on to Helenstadt, 
carrying letters of recommendation from Budolph to the Duke 
of Brunswick. He here published his Pantheistic work “ De 
Monade.” Becoming involved in a bitter feud with the Pro¬ 
testants, he was excommunicated by the head of the Church. 
His appeal for a new trial having been denied him, he set forth 
for Frankfort. Here in the midst of printers an;l scholars and 
booksellers, he found congenial society; and his quiet, brief 
retirement at Frankfort was like a bright oasis in the wander¬ 
er’s cheerless life. 

At this time a nobleman of Venice, Mocenigo, became inter¬ 
ested in him, and wrote him the most urgent letters, entreating 
him to come to Venice and be his guide, philosopher and friend. 
For ten long dreary years Bruno had been a wanderer in alien 
lands. An irresistible longing filled the heart of the wandering 
heretic to gaze once more on the azure of his native sky. Like 
the wounded eagle struggling back to its native eyrie, Bruno 
went back to his childhood’s sunny home, but went, alas, into 
the jaws of death. 

In his restless travels he had traversed France and England, 
Switzerland and Germany, everywhere irritating the clergy, 
everywhere his hand against every man and every man’s hand 
against him, everywhere the same undaunted heretic and 
innovator. And now he drew near the close of his wild adven¬ 
turous career. Premonitions of the awful impending tragedy 
that awaited him seemed to weigh sadly upon his spirit, as he 
wrote: “I feel my sufferings, but I despise them; I shrink not 
from death, and my heart will never submit to mortal.” Bruno 
went to Venice, and to prison. 

He went to Venice, overshadowed as it was by the Inquisi¬ 
tion. He was soon identified as the renegade Dominican monk 
against whom an accusation had been brought sixteen years 


60 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


before. By a dastardly violation of every law of hospitality he- 
was transferred at midnight from the palace of the nobleman 
who had induced him to come thither, to the frightful dungeons 
of the Inquisition. After be ng confined in the prison of Piombi 
for six years, without books or papers or friends, he was brought 
forth for trial. With characteristic audacity Bruno gave his 
judges a li t of his works, and with the air of a professor, 
rather than a criminal arraigned for his life, discussed with 
them their heretical tenets. He admitted his damning doubts as 
to the Incarnation, and confessed his Pantheistic definition of 
the first cause as “a God not outside creation, but the soul of 
souls, the monarch of monarchs, living, eternal, infinite, imma¬ 
nent; in the part, as in the whole, is God.” The definite 
charge preferred against him was: “He is not only a heretic, 
but a heresiarch. He has written divers things touching relig¬ 
ion, which are contrary to the faith.” 

He was surrendered to the Holy Office at Borne, in whose 
torture-dungeons he lay and languished for two years. None 
in this world will ever know how often he was tortured, or 
with what diabolical ingenuity his cruel persecutors sought to 
subdue his haughty, unyielding spirit. Sentence of death by 
burning alive was finally passed upon him in the Church of 
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. 

A week’s grace was given him for recantation, at the expira¬ 
tion of which the grandest hero that ever fell a victim to Chris¬ 
tian intolerance, exchanged the prison cell for the stake. And 
for what was Giordano Bruno given over to the martyrdom of 
flames? Freethought was his only crime. He essayed to shake 
off the sacerdotal shackles which enslaved the human intellect. 
He fell a victim to an age in which religious fanaticism ren¬ 
dered the wisest intolerant, the mildest cruel; in which “the 
glare of the stake reddened a sky illumined by the fair auroral 
light of science.” He had audaciously presumed to philoso¬ 
phize on matters of faith; he had promulgated the fetterless 
liberty of thought and investigation; he had contested the 
claims of the Church to infallibility in matters of science; h& 
had refused to attend mass, and had praised heretical princes; 
he had been an innovator, an iconoclast, and had propagated 
the astronomy of Copernicus. For such a man there was no> 


GIORDANO BRUNO. 


ant 

escape in the sixteenth century. He had not only openly 
opposed the dogmas of Christianity, but he had sought to* 
propagate such heresies as the rotation of the earth and the 
plurality of wor ds. In short, he arraigned Superstition at the 
bar of Reason. Bruno was a Pantheist. He has been termed 
“poet of the theory of which Spinoza is the geometer.” 

“His system,” says Hallam, “may be said to contain a sort 
of double Pantheism. The world is animated by an omnipres¬ 
ent, intelligent soul, the first cause of every form that matter 
can assume, but not of matter itself.” In his work, “Del 
Infinito Universo,” he asserts the infinity of the Universe and 
the plurality of worlds —that the stars are suns shining by 
their own light—that each has its revolving planets — these* 
were the enormous and capital offences of Bruno.” 

“The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one of the 
earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius as. 
his exemplar, he revived the notion of the infinity of worlds; 
and, combining with it the doctrine of Copernicus, reached the 
sublime generalization that the fixed stars are suns, scattered 
numberless through space and accompanied by satellites, 
which bear the same relation to them that our earth does to 
our sun, or our moon to our earth. This was an expansion of 
transcendent import; but Bruno came closer than this to our 
present line of thought. Struck with the problem of the gen¬ 
eration and maintenance of organisms, and duly pondering it, 
he came to the conclusion that Nature does not imitate the- 
technic of man. The infinity of forms under which matter 
appears, were not imposed upon it by an external artificer; by 
its own intrinsic force and virtue it brings these forms forth. 
Matter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which philoso¬ 
phers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who- 
brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb.” [Prof. 
Joh". Tyndall.] 

Bruno met the merciless death which the minions of the 
Church imposed upon him with the bravery of the true hero 
that lie was, and in so doing he inscribed his immortal name 
high upon the monument of nonor and glory. 


362 


CAMPANELL A. 


CAMPANELLA. 


Thomas Campanella was born at Stilo, a small village in 
Calabria, Sept. 5th, 1568. It is said that the precocity of his 
genius was wonderful. At the age of thirteen years he under¬ 
stood the ancient orators and poets, and wrote discourses and 
verses with great facility. At fourteen he enrolled himself a 
member of the order oi: Dominicans at San Giorgio. Here he 
assiduously applied himself to the study of theological subjects, 
his youthful ambition being to rival the fame of the great 
Thomas Aquinas. On one occasion his professor was invited to 
dispute upon some theses which were to be maintained by the 
Franciscans; but being indisposed, he sent Campanella in his 
place, who charmed the auditory with the force and subtlety of 
his argument. 

When his course of study was completed at the convent, he 
went to Cosenza, where he examined all the Latin, Greek, and 
Arabian commentators upon Aristotle, and anxiously perused 
the writings of Galen, Plato, Pliny, and those of the early 
Stoics. At length he discovered the sterility of the ancient 
methods of philosophizing, and found the doctrines of his 
master to be false in so many points that he began to doubt 
even of uncontroverted matters of fact. At the age of twenty- 
two he began to commit his new system to writing, and in 1591 
he went to Naples to get it printed. Sometime after he w r as 
present at a disputation in divinity, in which one of the old 
professors, jealous of the glory which Campanella was obtain¬ 
ing, bade him in a very contemptuous manner to be silent, 
since it did not belong to a young man, as he was, to take a 
part in such a controversy. Campanella fired at this, and said 
that, young as he was, he was able to teach him, and immedi¬ 
ately confuted all the professor had advanced to the satisfac¬ 
tion of the audience. This professor conceived a mortal hatred 
for him on this account, and accused him to the Inquisition, 
charging that he had gained by magic that vast extent of learn- 


CAMP AN ELL A. 


363 


Ing, which he had acquired without a master. Campanella soon 
became the subject of censure and persecution. 

His uncompromising hostility to Aristotle, backed as he was 
at that time by the omnipotent power of the Church, and the 
violent ferment his writings were raising, made a great noise in 
the world at that time. The hatred of his monastic brethren 
was particularly strong against him. He was supported, how¬ 
ever, by a few powerful and wealthy patrons, and he continued, 
for a time, in the face of all opposition, to persevere in his 
a!tempt to reform philosophy; but at length neither the power 
of his own genius nor the patronage of friends could further 
protect him from persecution, and he was obliged to flee. 

For about ten years he wandered through Italy, visiting 
Home, Florence, Venice, Padua, and Bologna. At Florence he 
saw the great Galileo. At last he settled in his native country. 
Some expressions which he dropped wi:h regard to the govern¬ 
ment of the Spaniards caused him to be arrested in 1599, as 
the leader of an alleged conspiracy. The wildest charges were 
preferred against him, and he was accused of the authorship of 
books he had never written. Notwithstanding the intercession 
of Pope Pius IV. and his nuncio, Campanella was kept in 
prison twenty-seven years, during the greater part of which 
time he was denied the privilege of reading and writing. He 
was put to the torture seven times. 

As soon as the indulgence of books and writing materials 
was granted he composed a work on the “Spanish Monarchy,” 
and another on “Pieal Philosophy,” both of which were sent 
into Germany to be published. In 1626 he was liberated in 
consequence of the express command of Pope Urban VIII. to 
Philip IV. of Spain. His flagrant heresies, however, made his 
residence in Italy unsafe. At Rome his preaching of the new 
philosophy caused intense excitement; his adversaries stirred 
up the mob against him, and he was obliged to escape in dis- 
guise to France, being assisted in his flight by the French 
Ambassador. 

At Paris he met with a cordial reception by Cardinal Rich¬ 
elieu, the founder of the French Academy, who was openly 
accused of Atheism. The great cardinal procured from Louis 
XIII. a pension for the exiled philosopher, which enabled him 


364 


0 AMPANELLA. 


to live comfortably at the Dominican monastery, in the Rue St.. 
Honore, Paris, until his death in 1639. His last years were 
spent in the midst of learned society, and before he expired lie 
paid a brief visit to Holland, where he met the celebrated 
Descartes. 

Most of Campanella’s works were written in prison, and it 
was while suffering incarceration that he bravely dared to 
champion the cause of Galileo, who was persecuted by the 
savage Inquisition, and compelled to recant his daring heresies- 
about the position and movement of the earth. 

. Among the numerous works of Campanella which were writ¬ 
ten in the latter years of his long imprisonment, and all of 
which were in elegant Latin, were the following: <: A Precursor 
to the Restoration of Philosophy,” “The Rejection of Pagan¬ 
ism,” “On Astrology,” “Rational Philosophy,” “The City of 
the Sun,” “Universal Philosophy,” “Atheism Subdued.” “The 
last work ought,” says a critic, “to have been entitled ‘Athe¬ 
ism Triumphant,’ as the writer puts far stronger arguments into 
the mouth of the Atheist than the Theist.” 

In these writings Campanella evinces great boldness and care¬ 
fulness of thought. He accepted the Telesian theory of matter, 
and of the perpetual action thereon of heat and cold, the two 
great active agents. He thought all animal operations produced 
by one universal spirit. All things in nature have a passive 
sense of feeling, and a consciousness of impressions. He held 
sensation to be the foundation of all knowledge, and the only 
trustworthy guide in philosophy. Like Bruno, Telesio, and 
Yanini, Campanella is chiefly celebrated for the spirit of his 
philosophy, which was highly scientific for tho age in which it 
appeared. And like them he should be honored as a champion 
of the cause of mental liberty, and one who dared and suffered 
persecution for the sake of Truth. 


* 


FRANCIS BACON. 


363 


FRANCIS BACON. 


Francis B^con, one of the greatest luminaries in English 
literature and philosophy, was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, a true statesman, and Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen 
Elizabeth. He was born on the 22d of January, 1561. In his 
early youth he was carefully instructed by his mother, a woman 
of great and varied learning, and at thirteen years of age 
entered Cambridge. It was there that he first indulged in 
dreams and resolutions of framing a method by which the 
futile philosophy in vogue should be displaced by one whose 
fruits would be blessings to mankind in all departments of life, 
.and which should have such a vitality as would make it a pos¬ 
session forever to man. While a very child, he seemed deter¬ 
mined to find out the causes of everything, from singular 
echoes to the tricks of jugglers. And this intense spirit of 
investigation followed him through all after years. When a 
student, at sixteen years of age, he is said to have conceived a 
decided dislike to the Aristotelian philosophy as then taught 
in the schools. After visiting France, he was admitted to the 
bar, and elected to the House of Commons, where he distin¬ 
guished himself by his terse and telling oratory. About this 
time an estate worth £1,800 a year, near Twickenham, was dona¬ 
ted to him by the Earl of Essex, in order to spite the overbear¬ 
ing Cecils, who seemed in every way to be trying to keep Bacon 
■down. He then however, conscientiously sought to convict his 
benefactor, who had by this time “proved himself a rebel and 
a traitor.” He was raised to knightho d the day before the 
coronation of King James I. (in 1603). In 1606 he married; in 
1G 7 he was made Solicitor-General; in 1611 he became one of 
the Judges of the Knights-Martial Court; in 1613 he was ap¬ 
pointed Attorney-General, and made a member of the Privy 
^Council; in 1617 he was appointed Keeper of the Great Seal; 
:and in 1618 he became Lord High Chancellor of England —the 
highest civil office to which an English subject could then 


366 


FRANCIS BACON. 


attain. In the same year he was created Baron of Yerulam, 
and took his seat in the House of Peers. In 1620 he was mado 
Viscount Saint Albans; and in the same year he brought out 
his great “Novum Organum,” embodying the ripest and richest 
results of his life-long studies. 

A grave biographical question, namely, that of Bacon’s polit¬ 
ical and moral conduct, must be here passed over without a 
word of positive comment, because the question is too critical,, 
complicated, and unsettled for any short, succinct narrative. 

He has his conscientious historical accusers, and as conscien¬ 
tious apologists. The charges against him were such that the 
king, impotent to save him, advised him to plead guilty. Ho 
confessed that he was guilty of corruption in office, and re¬ 
nounced all defense. So that some of the accusations were well 
founded, or else, from some motive difficult to conceive of, but 
which some attempt to define, he was induced to cast away his- 
good n me by a mock confession. Undoubtedly, the unscrupu¬ 
lous Buckingham and Bacon’s own mercenary servants, “whose- 
rise was his fall,” were at the bottom of his degradation. He 
was fined £40,000 and sent to the Tower, to stay there during 
the king’s pleasure. But it was a mere form. In two days he 
was set at liberty. Not long after, his fine was remitted, and he 
was permitted to present himself at Court; and in 1624 the rest 
of his sentence was remitted. He was at liberty to sit in the 
House of Lords, and was summoned to the next Parliament. 
He was allowed a pension of £1,200, no inconsiderable income 
for that age. The rest of his life was passed in retirement, 
mostly devoted to scientific pursuits. He died a martyr to sci¬ 
ence, April 19, 1626, leaving no children. 

“The great apostle of experimental philosophy,” says Mr. 
Macaulay, “was destined to be its martyr. It had occurred to 
him that snow might be used with advantage for the purpose' 
of preventing animal substances from putrefying. On a very 
cold day, early in the spring of the year 1626, he alighted from 
his coach near Highgate, to try the experiment. He went into 
a cottage, bought a fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it 
with snow. While thus engaged, he felt a sudden chill, and was 
so much indisposed, that it was impossible for him to return to 
Gray’s Inn. After an illness of about a week, he expired on 


FRANCIS BACON. 


367 


the morning of Easterday, 1626 . His mind appears to have 
retained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did not for¬ 
get the fowl which had caused his death. In the last letter 
that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could not 
steadily hold a pen, he did not forget to mention that the 
experiment of the snow had succeeded excellently well.” 

. . When dying, . . . knowing at once his errors and 
his greatness, he said: ‘ For my name and memory, I leave it 
to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the 
next age.’ His confidence was well placed. Leniently as we 
cannot but think him to have been treated by his contempora¬ 
ries, posterity has been still more gracious; and the reason is 
felicitously expressed by Macaulay: Turn where we will, the 
trophies of that mighty intellect are full in view. We are judg¬ 
ing Manlius in sight of the Capitol.” 

In regard to his attainment as a lawyer, Lord Campbell 
observes that “his mind was thoroughly familiar with the prin¬ 
ciples of jurisprudence,” and “that he had made himself com¬ 
plete master of the common law of England.” Furthermore, 
“no one ever sat in Westminster Hall with a finer judicial 
understanding; none ever more thoroughly understood the 
duties of a judge.” As an orator, rare Ben John on says: “No 
man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more v r eightily, or 
suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His 
hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. 
The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should maite 
an end.” 

Bacon’s greatest works were his “Instauratio Magna” (“The 
Great Instauration,” or “Restoration,”) of which the “Novum 
Organum ” (“New Instrument,” or new method of pursuin sci¬ 
ence), already referred to, is but a part; and his trealise “On 
i he Advancement of the Sciences,” or as he himself translates 
its Latin title, “On the Advancement of Learning ,” using the 
word in a wider sense than is common at the presen' day. 

Believing, as Bacon did, that the then prevailing mode of 
studying science (particularly natural science , had become 
greatly perverted, his aim in these works was to bring men 
back, so to speak, to the right employment of their powers, 
and to direct them into the path of honest and protracted 


368 


PRANCIS BACON. 


observation, experiment, comparison, and verification. Bacon’s 
method is, par excellence, the method of Organized Common 
Sense, or True Science, as against both the mythological 
assumptions and the metaphysical guessings so much in vogue 
in the past. 

Among Bacon’s other works we may mention his “Essays,” 
perhaps the most popular of all his writings, and his treatise 
“On the Wisdom of the Ancients.” His collection of apoph¬ 
thegms constitute one of the most attractive portions of his 
various works. 

He is commonly styled the Father of Experimental Philoso¬ 
phy, not because he was a great practical experimentalist, but 
owing to his Method. “That which distinguishes his conception 
of philosophy from all previous conceptions, is the complete 
systemization of graduated verification as the sole method of 
research.” In his separation of Science from Theology, an 
eminently scientific spirit is shown, especially when we consider 
that at such an epoch such a conception was really wonderful. 
Our narrow limits preclude us from entering, in this place, 
more fully into the consideration of the subject As a great 
original thinker — as the pioneer of Modern Science and Sc ; en- 
tific Philosophy— and as an author who builded far better than 
he knew, in the direction of high and cultured Infidelity, Fran¬ 
cis Bacon will through all ages stand gloriously alone. 


SHAKSPERE. 


369 


SIIAKSPERE. 


Op the life of Shakspere we know almost nothing. Nearly a 
^century ago one of his keenest commentators, in a single 
sentence, gave nearly all we know concerning this mighty 
genius whose fame now fills the world. “All that is known 
with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere,” says 
Stevens, “is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon—married 
and had children there — went to London, where he commenced 
-actor, and wrote poems and plays — returned to Stratford, 
made his will, died, and was buried.” Notwithstanding immense 
■efforts have been made to ascertain something that would 
throw light on his history, the above extract remains substan¬ 
tially as true as it was a century ago. So meagre indeed are 
the facts concerning him, that considerable plausibility exis.s 
in the arguments which have been advanced to prove that 
Shakspere as a poet is a myth, and that the real author of the 
plays known as his works was Lord Bacon. On this point we 
shall merely say in passing that in our judgment it would be 
more appropriate (for those who persist in wasting time) to 
argue the opposite of this. If Bacon’s Essays were not so 
deficient in imagination, and sometimes weakened by supersti¬ 
tion, we might easily enough conceive Shakspere as the author 
of them. 

No poet, if we except Goethe, had such an intense reverence 
tor the real as Shakspere it is this which stamps him as the 
greatest artist this world has yet produced. His power of 
invention was boundless, and still he professed to use incidents 
and events familiar to the average minds as the foundations 
whereon to erect those wonderful creations of his genius. He 
had profound faith in all things, however trifling, if they had 
once been treasured in human hearts. That with him was 
sufficient to sanctify them for human uses. Herein we find the 
xeal source of the power which made him the world’s best 


» 


/ 


370 SHAKSPERE. 

interpreter of Human Nature. Thus centered, it may be truly 
said of him, in his own immortal words: — 

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 

And, as imagination bodies forth 
The form of things unknown, the poet’s pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings 
A local habitation and a name.’ 

But in the immensity of his flights on the wings of imagina¬ 
tion, he is never lost in the mazes of doubt or perplexity. 
Nothing could shake his faith in the phenomena of this “sure 
and firm set Earth” and the Soul of Man. 

Much ingenious speculation has been expended in endeavors 
to ascertain Shakspere’s religious belief. It is needless to say 
the question is still unsettled. All creeds had a meaning for 
him, but to suppose that Catholicism or Protestantism could 
satisfy him is to misconceive the scope of his genius. He 
sympathized with all forms of religion so far as they were 
Human. He nowhere commits himself to any particular form 
of faith, while his writings, breathe the spirit of them all, 
wholly free from superstition on the one hand, or infidelity on 
the other, but always profoundly impressed with the conviction 
that 

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 

Rough-hew them how we will.’’ 

But the divinity is purely natural and human. It is neither 
Nemesis, nor Infinite Caprice, but a power to be studied and 
conquered by obedience; and in that submission his soul found 
such serenity and peace that he could say 

“Cheer your heart; 

Be you not troubled with the time, which drives 
O’er your content these strong necessities; 

But let determined things to destiny 
Hold unbewail’d their ways.” 

Yet while he held that there was a destiny which determined 
things, he does not lead us to the conclusion that it is fatal¬ 
istic 


SHAKSPERE. 


371 


“Men at some time are masters of tlieir fates; 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 

"We might go on and quote passage after passage, all tending 
to confirm our position that Shakspero was entirely free from 
all forms of Supernaturalism. It is customary with metaphys¬ 
ical and theological critics to hold that he puts his own opin¬ 
ions into the mouths of his characters, and is thus committed 
to a belief in Christianity. The position is untenable, as any 
competent student of our great poet is well aware that he 
could be committed to every form of religious belief, if this 
method of reasoning were admitted. He was no more a Chris¬ 
tian than a Pagan. But he was truly an organ of Humanity. 

Let us' here say a few words as to the secret of his power 
and influence, and in this we hope to justify his claim to a 
place among the loftiest Freethinkers of the world. 

In the vast range of his comprehensive mind, he is never 
tempted to transcend the region of Human experience. Even 
if we examine his witches, fairies, ghosts, etc., and compare 
them with this order of fictions in theological minds, we shall 
find they are widely different: with Shakspere they are purely 
subjective, “false creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed 
brain.” No one but Macbeth could see the ghost of Banquo. 
Hamlet’s mother could not see the ghost of Hamlet’s father. 
Caesar’s ghost appeared to none but Brutus. Had Shakspere 
believed in ghosts, it would certainly have appeared in these 
cases. In his plays they are merely subjective existences, pro¬ 
jected and made objective realities by the disordered minds of 
those who saw them. And because they are subjective existen¬ 
ces, or rather conceptions, no one can see them, except those 
who ought. They are the mere offspring of weakness and super¬ 
stition, and always come to rebuke the crimes which supersti¬ 
tion and weakness cannot prevent. 

When we consider the age in which Shakspere lived, it is 
truly wonderful how he resisted the religious excitement of the 
time. The tires of the Beformatioii were still burning. The 
religious heart of England was moved to a reliance and trust 
in “God,” to an extent never before, and certainly not since 


372 


SHAKSPERE. 


equaled. But this intense excitement had no influence on his 
mind. Nature is represented by him as pursuing her remorse¬ 
less career. Men and women are inevitably chained to Iheir 
weakness and wicked ess. The inexorable order of Nature is 
deaf to prayers and entreaties. Shakspere sees it all, yet not 
for a moment does he hold out any hope to the suffering that 
there is a “God” to hear their supplications, nor does he lead 
them to hope for any compensation in a world beyond the 
grave. It is impossible to conceive that, under these circum¬ 
stances, if he had even a vestige of theolog : eal belief, it would 
have failed to manifest itself. The conviction is forced upon 
us that he was so unmeasurably removed from the legion of 
Theologism, that he saw in the disorder and anarchy of the 
time that the reign of Supernaturalism had ended. 

Such is the conclusion at which we have arrived from a 
somewhat careful study of this great author. And we earnesly 
recommend all to study him, of whom it was truly said: “He 
was not for an age, but for all time.” 

The works of the sublime Shakspere are not merely for the 
amusement of an idle hour. It is incumbent on all who would 
teach themselves or others the way to a higher life here, not 
beyond the grave in some imaginary world, to study his immor¬ 
tal pages. Here we see the mighty drama of Human Life, iis 
strength and its weakness, its glory and its shame, and its 
sublime possibilities. But above all, this grand teacher inspires 
ail noble minds with hope, courage and strength. If there is 
one les on more clearly taught than another by him, it is this: 
Look not beyond this world and man for the source of happi¬ 
ness and welfare. And he leads us all to one conclusion —that 
this life is all we have, and no matter what use we may make 
of it, whether good or evil, when death overtakes us we must 
say with Hamlet in his last words, “The rest is silence.” 


GALILEO. 


373 


GALTLEO. 


This great astronomer and philosopher was born of a noble 
family at Pisa the fifteenth of February 1564. From early 
childhood he showed a predilection for mechanical invention. 
At Flore ce he acquired proficiency in music, painting and the 
classics, after which, in 1582 he went to Pisa to study medicine. 
But his natu al genius led him to prefer geometry and physi¬ 
cal philosophy, in which he made wonderful progress. 

In 1584 he discovered the isochronism of the vibrations of a 
pendulum. Bacon was his contemporary, and like him he 
asserted his independence against the authority of Aristotle, 
and appealed to the impartial umpirage of experiment. 

In 1589 he was chosen professor of mathematics in the uni¬ 
versity of Pisa, where he demonstrated by dropping balls of 
different sizes from the top of the famous leaning tower, that 
bodies of unequal weights will fall with proportionate velocities. 
He was also the first who discovered the law by which the 
velocity of falling bodies s accelerated. The Senate of Venice 
in 1592 appointed him professor of mathematics in Padua for the 
term of six years, which term was renewed in 1598. During 
this period he invented a thermometer, and, af er examining the 
rival theories of astronomy, he adopted the system of Coper¬ 
nicus, which was then regarded as heretical by the clergy and 
schoolmen of Italy. In 1609 he constructed his telescope. 

Though the honor of inventing the telescope is generally 
com ceded to Galileo, the truth seems to be that he only invented 
a fo rn of the instrument for himself. Lippershey, a Hollander, 
during the previous year discovered that by looking through 
two glass lenses, combined in a certain manner, distant objects 
were magnified and rendered distinct. Galileo had heard of 
the circumstance but knew nothing of the particulars of the 
construction. He made one for himself, and continued improv¬ 
ing it until he succeeded in constructing one that magnified 
thirty times. Looking through it at the moon, he found 


374 


GALILEO. 


that she had valleys like those of the earth, and mountains cast¬ 
ing shadows. The old-time theory was that there were once 
seven stars in the Pleiades, but that one of them had mysteri¬ 
ously disappeared. Galileo found by turning his telescope 
toward them that he could easily count not fewer than forty. 
In every direction he discovered stars that were totally invisi¬ 
ble to the naked eye. He saw with rapt admiration the satel¬ 
lites of Jupiter and the luminous nebulae of the milky way 
resolve into myriads of stars or flaming orbs. 

It was on the night of January the 7th, 1610, that he discov-? 
ered three small stars in a straight line adjacent to the planet 
Jupiter. A few evenings later he saw a fourth. He found that 
these were revolving in orbits round the body of the planet, 
and with rapture recognized that they presented a miniature 
representation of the Copernican system. 

The sublime results which Galileo realized in the application 
of the telescope to astronomy, at once attracted the attention 
of the world. 

In all ages the majority have preferred to cling to anti¬ 
quated errors rather than permit the radiance of truth to 
expose their ignorance. The church authorities were not slow 
to detect the tendency of Galileo’s recent discoveries as endan¬ 
gering the doctrine that the Universe was made for man. In 
the creation of myriads of stars, hitherto invisible, there must 
have been some other motive than that of illuminating the 
nights for him. And so the wise ones of the time actually 
declined the labor of verification even when Galileo offered to 
give them the most positive proofs of the newly discovered 
astronomical truths. He thus good-humoredly wrote to his 
friend Kepler at this time: 

“O my dear Kepler! how I wish we could have a hearty 
laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal professor of 
philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to 
look at the moon and planets through my glass, which he 
pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here ? What 
shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly.” 

Previously to Copernicus it was supposed that the planet? 
shone by their own light; and it had been objected to the 
Copernican theory that, if the planets Mercury and Venus move 


GALILEO. 


375 


round the sun in orbits interior to that of the earth, they ought 
to show phases like those of the moon, and that in the case of 
Venus, which is so brilliant and conspicuous, these phases 
should be very obvious. Copernicus himself had vainly endeav¬ 
ored to find an explanation. But through his telescope, Galileo 
discovered that the expected phases actually exist; one time 
she was a crescent, then half-moon, then gibbous, then full. 

In 1611 in the garden of Cardinal Bandini at Rome, Galileo 
publicly exhibited spots upon the sun. He had discovered them 
the previous year. These beautiful telescopic discoveries, estab¬ 
lishing as they did the system of Copernicus, filled the Church 
with consternation. 

By the low and ignorant ecclesiastics they were denounced 
as deceptions or frauds. Some affirmed that the telescope 
might be relied upon well enough for terrestrial objects, but 
with the heavenly bodies it was altogether a different affair. 

Goaded on by the opposition his discoveries were bringing 
upon him, he addressed a letter, in 1613, to the Abbe Castelli, 
ior the purpose of showing that the Scriptures were not intended 
as a scientific authority. This had been an offense for which 
Bruno had been burnt. The Dominicans commenced to attack 
Galileo from their pulpits. He was accused of imposture, 
heresy, blasphemy, and atheism. He wrote another letter reit¬ 
erating his former opinions, in which he repeated that the 
Bible was only intended for salvation, and recalled the tact that 
Copernicus had dedicated his book to Pope Paul III. The 
Dominicans succeeded in having him summoned to Rome to 
account for his opinions before the Inquisition. He was accused 
of having taught that the earth moves round the sun, a doc¬ 
trine “utterly contrary to the Scriptures.” He was ordered to 
renounce that heresy on pain of being imprisoned. He was 
required to renounce the heresy of Copernicus and pledge him¬ 
self that he would neither publish nor defend it for the future. 
Recollecting the fate of Bruno, and knowing that truth has no 
grave need of martyrs, he assented to the required recantation, 
and the promise demanded. The Holy Inquisition then proceeded 
to deal with the Copernican system, condemning it as heretical; 
the letters of Galileo were prohibited; also Kepler’s epitome 
and the work of Copernicus. The new system of the Universe 


376 


GALILEO. 


was denounced as “that false Pythagorean doctrine utterly con¬ 
trary to Holy Scriptures. ” 

For s xteen years Galileo gave the Church rest. During ti.is 
period Pope Paul Y. had admitted him to an audience, at which 
he professed to him personally the kindest sentiments, and assur¬ 
ed him of sa ety. When Urban VIII. succeeded to the pontifical 
chair, Galileo received the honor of not less than s'x audiences. 
That pope conferred on him several presents and a pension for 
his son. He wrote a letter to the Duke of Florence, in which 
he stated how dear Galileo was to him, that he had lovingly em¬ 
braced him, and requested the duke to show him every favor. 

But the maintenance of a great scientific truth which he 
deemed of the highest interest to mankind, and the hatred of 
that churchianic despotism which was weighing upon Europe, 
at last became irrepressible in the breast of the astronomer, 
and determined him to hazard the publication of his work, 
entitled “The System of the World.” He was again summoned, 
before the Inquisition at Rome, accused of having asserted that- 
the earth moves around the sun. He was declared to have 
brought upon himself the penalty of heresy. He was com¬ 
pelled to appear at Rome, February, 1633, and surrender him¬ 
self to the Holy Office. The Tuscan ambassador expostulated 
against thus dealing with an old man in ill-health. But no 
such considerations were ever listened to by Christian inquisi¬ 
tors, and Galileo was directed to appear on June 22d, to hear 
his sentence. 

Clothed in the penitential garment, he received judgment. 
He was declared to be liable to the penalties of heresy, but. 
from these he might be absolved if with a sincere heart he 
would abjure and curse his damnable doctrines. On his knees, 
with his hand on the Bible, the old man was compelled to 
abjure and curse the doctrine of the movement of the earth. 
And what a spectacle! This venerable astronomer, the most 
learned and illustrious man of his age, forced by the threat of 
torture and death, to prostrate himself before a false and foo.ish 
old Jew book and ignorant Christian bigots, and to deny facts, 
which his judges, as well as himself, knew to be true. 

Thus the mailed and bloody hand of supers.ition has sought 
to crush genius, and liberty, and science in its merciless grasp- 


GALILEO. 


377 


through all the Christian ages. Every think r anil discoverer 
has been denounced as an innovator, a disturber, an Infidel, 
and a wretch. 

After the aged philosopher, clad in his garment of disgrace, 
had been forced to fall upon his knees before the assembled 
cardinals, and with his hand on the Bible, had solemnly abjured 
the heliocentric system, he was committed to the prison of the 
terrible Inquisition. The persons who had been concerned in 
the printing of his book were punished, and the sentence and 
abjuration were formerly promulgated and publicly read in all 
the Universities. His adherents in Florence were obliged to* 
attend in the Church of Santa Croce to witness his disgrace. 
Orher misfortunes awaited him. His favorite daughter died. 
His id-health increased, and he fell into a state of melancholy. 
Medical advice was refused him. 

It has been thought by some, that Galileo yielded too much 
to the spirit of int lerance and clerical despotism when he made 
his recantation of that which his soul knew was truth; but 
when his great age is considered, the fate of Bruno and others, 
who had preceded him, and the well-known relentlessness of 
the Inquisition, it cannot be thought strange that, to evado 
continued torture and imprisonment, he dissembled to soma 
extent and acknowledged himself in error. But it cannot be 
believed that the old astronomer for a moment doubted the 
discoveries he had made. It has been asserted of him that, 
immediately after his releasement from his dungeon, and in 
alluding to the motion of the earth, he ejaculated, “ It still 
move .” It is probable, however, that the dread of the cruel 
powers of the inquisitors prevented h s speaking these words 
aloud; but that he believed them and knew them to be true 
cannot for a moment be doubted. 

During the remaining ten years of his life he was remorse¬ 
lessly pursued with all the exquisite refinement of ecclesiastical 
vengeance. In 1637 he became totally blind. At this time he 
was visited by the illustrious author of “Paradise Lost.” 
Shortly after he became totally deaf. But to the last moment 
of his life, the immortal old convict occupied himself with 
investigations respecting the force of percussion. He died a 
prisoner of the Inquisition, Jan., 1612, in the seventy-eighth 


378 


GALILEO. 


year of his age. But the infernal followers of St. Dominio 
pursued him beyond the grave, disputing his right to make a 
will, and denying him burial in consecrated ground. The pope 
also prohibited his friends from raising to him a monument at 
Florence. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to erect 
a suitable memorial in his honor. 

Through his telescope, Galileo read the riddle of the lofty 
stars. For countless centuries they had shone on in the silent 
solitudes of immensity; and neither to the Magians on the 
plains of Shinar, nor to Moorish star-gazers from the turrets of 
the Alhambra, had been revealed the mystery of their move¬ 
ments. But the eye of curiosity never sleeps. And Galileo, 
from his childhood a gazer at all things beautiful and a ques¬ 
tioner of all things dim, studied the stars. But their secret 
was written in a too far-off type to be read by the naked eye. 
He constructed his lens, and with lines of light he drew them 
down and read their hidden laws. And then for the first time 
the vail of Egyptian Isis was lifted up, the mystery of the ages 
was solved, and the true theory of the Universe was fixed for¬ 
ever. 

“ Keep, Galileo to thy thought, 

And nerve thy soul to bear; 

They may gloat o’er the senseless words they wring 
From the pangs of thy despair; 

They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide 
The sun’s meridian glow; 

The heel of a priest may tread thee down, 

And a tyrant work thee woe. 

But never a truth has been destroyed, 

They may curse it and call it crime; 

Pervert and betray, or slander and slay 
Its teachers for a time* 

But the sunshine aye shall light the sky, 

As round and round we run, 

And the truth shall ever come uppermost, 

And justice shall be done.” 


LORD HERBERT. 


379 


LORD HERBERT. 

“Lord Herbert of Cherbury” was born at Eyton, Shrop¬ 
shire, England, though some say at Montgomery, Wales, in 
1581, and was a descendant of the Earl of Pembroke. He studied 
at Oxford, and then proceeded to journey on the Continent, 
where, owing to his love of enterprise, he joined the English 
auxiliaries then serving in the Netherlands. “Here he soon 
distinguished himself by his intrepidity and daring. On the 
accession of King James I., he was made a Knight of the Bath; 
this being only the prelude to further honors he received at 
the hands of the pedantic king, at whose court he distinguished 
himself alike by his gallantry and learning.” He was twice 
sent as English Ambassador to France, where, in 1624, he pub¬ 
lished his Latin treatise “On Truth, as distinguished from 
Revelation, from Probability, from Possibility, and from False¬ 
hood.” In the same year he returned to England he was cre¬ 
ated a Baron in the Irish peerage. Enlarged editions of his 
treatise appeared at intervals. In 1645 appeared his second 
work, also in Latin, “On the Religion of the Gentiles, and the 
Causes of their Errors,” which, fifty years later, was translated 
into English. He was also the author of a “History of the Life 
and Reign of Henry VIII.,” which Horace Walpole calls “a 
masterpiece of historic biography,” and “The Life of Lord 
Herbert, written by himself,” besides (most probably) a “Dia¬ 
logue between a Tutor and a Pupil.” He was reputed one of 
the most eminent English statesmen and philosophers of the 
age in which he lived. He was a brother of George Herbert, 
often called the “Holy,” so well known for his quaint poems 
.and his prose work “ The Country Parson.” Lord Herbert died 
in 1648. 

He was a man of punctilious personal honor, which some¬ 
times seemingly amounted to a species of morbidity. 

“In his views and principles of philosophizing he was the 
diametrical opposite of his contemporary Hobbes. He believed 


380 


LORD HERBERT, 


in innate ideas, and held that a faculty of the mind, which he 
designated reasoning instinct, was the primary source of all 
knowledge. With him the mind was not the pure tablet of 
Aristotle and Zeno, nor the tabula rasa of the mediaeval school¬ 
men, ‘but a closed volume which opens itself at the solicita¬ 
tion of outward nature act'ng upon the senses.’ The mind 
being thus stimulated, solves for itself certain general or uni¬ 
versal principles (communes notiones) to which all disputed 
questions in philosophy and theology must be referred; for he 
holds that all men are unanimous upon these ‘ common 
notions.’ Fairly making out these views, he denies the claim 
of religion to be founded upon revelation or historical tradition, 
but asserts that it is based, in the case of each man individ¬ 
ually, upon a consciousness of God and the associated theolog¬ 
ical dogmas. The general religion of reason, then, is the cri¬ 
terion to which every faith claiming to be founded on historical 
revelation must be referred. Only those to whom a revelation 
has been directly given can derive any satisfaction or certainty 
from the fact. For the moment a revelation which has been 
made to me is transmitted by me to any one else, it is no rev¬ 
elation to him. To all but the object of the revelation, it is a 
mere matter of unauthoritative and unconvincing tradition or 
testimony. Nor is this all, for, says Herbert, it is very possible 
tha the recipient of a supposed revelation may be deceived, for 
he has necessarily no means of testing its reality and authen¬ 
ticity. Herbert . . . upheld the following as the articles of 
his reasonable religion: 

“ There is a God whom man ought to honor and reverence. 

A life of purity is the worship to him most acceptable. 

Repentance of sin is pre-requisite to purity of life. 

There is a state of rewards and punishments after death fitly 
apportioned to the merits or demerits of life.” 

‘‘With a most singular inconsistency, although clearly alleg¬ 
ing the necessary impossibility of a revelation being transmitted 
to any one but its personal recipient, Lord Herbert absolutely 
claimed attention and consideration— nay, authority, for his chief 
treatise, on the very plea which he had so cogently demolished. 
He alleges, at the close of his autobiography, that he was the 
recipient of a direct inspiration, which he expects to be accepted 


LORD HERBERT. 


381 


as testimony in favor of the truth of his writings, by the very 
Iversons whom he has taught to regard all such testimony as 
valueless.” 

The famous passage runs as followsBeing thus doubtful 
about publishing the Treatise [on Truth], in my chamber one 
fair day in the summer, my casement being opened toward the 
north, the sun shining clear and no wind stirring, I took my 
book “ De Yeritate” in my hand, and kneeling on my knees 
devoutly, said these words:— 

“‘O thou Eternal God, author of the light which now shines 
upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech 
thee o thy infinite goodness to pardon a greater request than 
a sinner ought to make: I am not satisfied enough whether I 
.shall publish this book ‘De Yeritate’; if it be for thy glory, I 
beseech thee give me some sign from Heaven; if not I shall 
repress it. 

“ I had no sooner spoken these words, but a lbud though yet 
gentle voice came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on 
earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my peti¬ 
tion as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded, where¬ 
upon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange 
soever it may appear) I protest before the eternal God is true, 
neither am I in any way superstitiously deceived herein, since I 
did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky 
that ever I saw, being with ut all cloud, did to my thinking 
see the place from whence it came.” 

The one great demonstration of Lord Herbert’s book is that 
of the inherent impossibility of a so-called divine revelation, at 
least, to more than one person at a time. But in the light of 
the “skyey sign” just noticed, he appears, after finishing his 
w 7 ork, to have somewhat changed his opinion on the matter, 
and expected this sign to be esteemed as a test in favor of the 
truth of his scripture. 


VAN I N I. 


VANINT. 


Lucilio Vanini, the Italian philosopher and Atheist, was 
born at Taurisano, near Naples, in 1585. His father, the steward 
of the Viceroy of Naples, sent him to Home at an early age,, 
where he made philosophy, theology, astronomy and medicine 
his special studies. In his works he accords to each«of his 
masters great praise, calling Argotti, his first master in the¬ 
ology, the phoenix of preachers, and Jean Bacon, his preceptor 
in philosophy, the Prince of Averroists. Averroes and Aristotle^ 
were his favorite authors, but to neither of them did he pin 
his faith. After completing his studies at Rome, he proceeded 
to P ;dua, where he devoted himself wholly to the study of the¬ 
ology, became a doctor of canon and civil law, and was ordained 
a priest. 

The father of Vanini, though a worthy man and one of ele¬ 
vated character, died without leaving his son any fortune. But 
the young doctor and priest supported his poverty with honor 
and courage. He thus writes: “Have we not braved the most 
piercing colds of- winter at Padua, with wretchedly insufficient 
raiment, animated solely by the desire to learn? All is warm 
for those who love.” 

After he had completed his studies at Padua, he set out on 
a journey through Europe, visiting all the principal academies, 
and engaging in the conferences of the learned. It appear® 
from his writings that he must have traveled over the greater 
part of Europe, traversing not only the whole of Italy, but 
a so France, England, Holland, and Germany. It is related 
that he confessed to the Parliament at Toulouse before his- 
execution, that at Naples, before starting on his travels, he and 
a dozen of his friends had formed the project of journeying 
over Europe to promulgate Atheism, and that France fell to his 
share. This story, however, has been stigmatized by Rousselot 
as a libelous detraction from Vanini’s character, and declares- 
that he was obliged to quit Italy and seek refuge in France,, 


VAN I NI. 


38$ 


where he published his two principal works. Everywhere he went 
he discussed and expounded his opinions, arousing the opposition 
of the bigoted, and extorting the admiration of the independent. 

He resided at Lyons for a time, where he had one of his 
works published in 1615; but he was compelled to flee to Lon¬ 
don to avoid being burnt. In 1616 he was imprisoned for forty- 
nine days by the zealous religi nists of the great English 
metropolis. He next proceeded to Paris, where he had for host 
and projector Marshal de Bassompierre, to whom he dedicated 
his second great work. He here formed the friendship of the 
papal Nuncio, Ubaldini, whose rich library afforded him invalu¬ 
able opportunity for study. 

But his naturally uneasy and adventurous spirit impelled 
him to wander like a knight-errant of philosophy, and he soon 
left Paris for Toulouse. Besides, his safety would have been 
imperiled by a longer stay at Paris. His two works had been 
examined and sanctioned by the Sorbonne; but one of them 
having made a great noise, it was again submitted to the Sor- 
bonne and condemned to be burnt. The author was accused of 
reproducing dangerous doctrines which had been suppressed, 
and of having, by his preaching and writing, succeeded in 
securing fifty thousand atheistic followers among the young- 
men, doctors, and poets at Paris. 

At Toulouse Yanini found his life overshadowed by this sen¬ 
tence of the Sorbonne, and before long the fate of his work 
became his own. He was denounced as an impious heretic by 
a treacherous friend, who was accustomed to meet with others 
at his philosophical conferences. The holy Father Garasse 
speaks of him in the following language: 

“Lr.cilio Yanini was a Neapolitan nobody, who had roamed 
over all Italy in search of fresh food, and over great parts of 
France as a pedant. 

“ This wicked rascal, having arrived at Gascoigne, in the year 
1617, endeavored to disseminate his own madness, and to make 
a rich harvest of impiety, thinking to have found spirits sus¬ 
ceptible to his teachings, he insinuated himself with effrontery 
amongst the nobles and gentry, as frankly as if he had been a 
domestic, and acquainted with all the humors of the great; 
but he met with spirits more strong and resolute in the defense 


384 


YANINI. 


of truth than he had imagined. The first who discovered his 
horrible impifeties was a gentleman named Francon, possessed 
of sound sense. It happened that toward the end of 1618, Fran¬ 
con having gone to Toulouse, as he was esteemed a brave gen¬ 
tleman and an agreeable companion, soon saw himself visited 
by an Italian, reported to be an excellent philosopher, and one 
who propounded many novel and startling curiosities, This 
man spoke such fine things, such novel propositions, and such 
agreeable witticisms, that he easily attached himself to Francon, 
by a sympathy of the supp’e and serviceable disposition of his 
hypocritical nature. Having made an opening, he commenced 
to insert a wedge; little by little he hazarded maxims ambig¬ 
uous, and every way dangerous, until no longer able to contain 
the venom of his malice, he discovered himself entirely.” 

The worthy father states that Francon’s first impulse was to 
poniard Yanini, but after reflection he preferred to denounce 
him. It was thus that Yanini was taken in a trap and deliv¬ 
ered into the hands of the law. He was brought to trial, con¬ 
demned to have his tongue cut out, and then to be burnt alive. 
This awful sentence was carried into execution, and on the 19th 
4ay of Feb., 1619, in the Place St. Etienne, Toulouse, Lucilio 
Yanini was burnt to ashes at the bigot’s stake. Unflinchingly 
he met his fearful fate. Even his persecutors were struck with 
his lofty heroism. Le Mercure Francais relates “that he died 
with as much constancy, patience, and fortitude, as any other 
man ever seen; for setting forth from the Conciergerie joyful 
and elate, he pronounced in Italian these words: ‘ Come, let us 
die cheerfully like a philosopher.’” 

There is a report that, on seeing the pile, he cried out, “Ah, 
my God!” on which one said, “you believe in God, then?” 
and he retorted, “No; it's a fashion of speaking.” Father 
Garasse says “ihat he uttered many other notable blasphe¬ 
mies, refused lo ask forgiven ss of God, or of the king, and died 
furious and defiant. So obstinate indeed was he, that pincers 
had to be employed to pluck out his tongue, in order duly to 
execute the sentence of the law.” 

The President Gramond writes: “I saw him in the tumbril, 
as they led him to execution, mocking the Cordelier who had 
been s. n to exhort him to repentance, and insulting our Sav- 


VANINI. 


385 


lor by these impious words: ‘ He sweated with fear and weak¬ 
ness, and I, I die undaunted.’” 

Contrast the manly honor, the unshaken firmness, the inflex¬ 
ible adherence to the truth, thus displayed by the valiant 
Yanini, with him who more than fifteen centuries previously in 
the garden of Gethsemane had sweat, as it were, great drops of 
blood in contemplation of his death, and whose last words, 
while passing from earth to Paradise, had been, “Eloi! Eloi, 
lama, sabachthani! My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken 
me.” The brave Italian martyr to freedom showed no such 
craven fear; when he looked death in the face, and when the 
most cruel tortures were inflicted upon him he quailed not; nor 
did he cry out in piteous exclamations of anguish and terror. 

Thus perished Yanini, at the age of thirty-four, an unvan- 
<quished victim of Christian bigotry. To the last he was an 
obstinate heretic. His skepticism was of the most pronounced 
and uncompromising character. He was one of the most hardy 
and enlightened spirits of his century. Of course, there were 
mixed with the graver and more valuable matter of his writ¬ 
ings some fallacies and examples of false science, such as 
might be expected in an age of crude speculation. But this in 
no way detracts from his greatness. He was one of the most 
skeptical men of his time — a brave, strong-souled man —an 
iconoclast. With grand power of vision he pierced the hideous, 
placid form of ignorance, and with a splendid strength cast off 
the burden of superstition. He was arraigned for being an 
.Atheist, and suffered the torments of fire at the stake as such. 
Bravely and defiantly he met death in the prime of life, a 
champion of reason against the power of Christian authority. 
Lucilio Yanini wears the crown of martyrdom, and his name is 
enrolled in the glorious calendar of Freethought saints as a 
.heroic soldier in the cause of human emancipation. 


386 


HOBBES. 


HOBBES. 

This famous English philosopher was born at Malmesbury 
in 1588. As tutor in a nobleman’s family he traveled several 
times on the continent with his pupils, and became acquainted 
with Gassendi, Descartes, &c. Besides a Latin translation of 
Thucydides, (1628) and an essay on government, (1642) he wrote 
in 1650 a treatise on “Human Nature,” which was followed 
by the “Leviathan” — a complete system of his philosophy, 
including his political, moral, and theological views —which 
caused great offense, to theologians especially. In 1666, this 
work and his essay on government were censured by Parlia¬ 
ment. But soon after the Bestoration, he received a pension of 
one hundred pounds. His opinions were warmly controverted 
by Cudworth, Clarendon, and others. In 1675 he published 
translations in verse of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” — misera¬ 
ble failures as xjoetry. In his old age he brought out a “ History 
of the Civil War from 1640 to 1660.” Besides the above he 
wrote five or six other works, mostly on mathematics and phi¬ 
losophy. 

“Though an enemy to religion,” says Hume, “he partakes 
nothing of the spirit of skepticism, but is as positive and 
dogmatical as if human reason could attain a thorough convic¬ 
tion in these subjects.” But, says Mackintosh, “a permanent 
foundation of his fame consists in his admirable style, which 
seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, 
clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one 
meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. . . . 
His little tract an * Human Nature ’ has scarcely an ambiguous 
or a needless word. . . . Perhaps no writer of any age or 
nation, on subjects so abstruse, has manifested an equal power 
of engraving his thoughts on the minds of his readers. . . . 
His style so stimulates attention that it never tires, and, to 
those who are acquainted with the subject, appears to have as 
much spirit as can be safely blended with reason.” 


HOBBES. 


387 


It seems that Hobbes made religion a mere affair of State. 
To his philosophic mind, all the religions of his day were, no 
doubt, equally absurd; just as to the statesmen of the period they 
were equally useful. Indeed, the philosopher of Malmesbury not 
only dealt ruthlessly with religion, but even “struck affections 
out of his map of human nature, and having totally misunder¬ 
stood the nature even of the appetites, it is no wonder that we 
should find in it not a trace of the moral sentiments.” From 
all this, and a diligent reading of his works, we arrive at the 
conclusion that Hobbes was an incarnation of cold intellect. 
He was dreaded by the church and the clergy; and his works 
have contributed largely ever since in destroying their influ¬ 
ence over the heads, if not over the hearts of the leading men 
of England. 

It was persistently declared, especially by the clergy, that 
Hobbes was afraid of being left alone, especially in an empty 
house, on account of his guilty conscience, which meant on 
account of his opposition to the Church. He was, even from 
early infancy, of a timid disposition; and moreover, he found 
himself, at the age of seventy, a feeble man, with all the 
English clergy hounding on their dupes to murder an old phi¬ 
losopher because he had exposed their dogmas. Indeed, he had 
positive proof that the Church of England intended to burn him 
alive, at the stake, a martyr for his opinions. No wonder this 
“ bear, against whom the Church played its young dogs, in order 
to exercise them,” kept so close to his cage. 

It has been strongly asserted by many that he maintained 
the propriety of making use oi bad means to procure a good 
end; but other students and critics of his works thoroughly 
deny this; while others still admit that in extreme cases only 
did he maintain anything approaching to Jesuiiical casuistry. 
It is true he wrote “ If I were cast into a deep pit. and the 
Devil should put down his cloven foot, I would readily lay hold 
of it to get out.” And he was right. 

He died in 1679, and (as many of our boldest and most 
learned Freethinkers have done before and since) in formal 
communion with the Anglican Church. 


388 


DESCAETES. 


DESCARTES. 

This illustrious French philosopher and mathematician was 
born of Breton parents at La Haye, in Touraine, France, March 
31st, 1596. “He was educated at the college of La Fleche, 
where he formed a lasting friendship with Mersenne, and cher¬ 
ished a partiality for mathematical science, in which he was 
destined to make most important discoveries. On leaving col¬ 
lege, at the age of nineteen, his first step was to renounce all 
his books, to efface from his mind all scholastic dogmas and 
prejudices, and then to admit nothing that could not bear the 
test of reason and experiment. It is difficult to realize at the 
present day how bold was such an attempt, how arduous such 
a task, at a time when the philosophy of Aristotle still main¬ 
tained despotic sway, and when to question his decisions was 
generally deemed by learned men the height of arrogance. To 
perfect his education, he resolved- to travel; and, as it was 
usual in that age to make the military profession subservient 
to such a design, he entered the Dutch army in 1616, and 
entered the service of the Duke of Bavaria in 1619.” He 
fought with great br very at the battle of Prague in 1620. 
While in the garrison at Breda, he solved a difficult mathemat¬ 
ical problem, which had been posted in the public streets; and 
this introduced him to the acquaintance of the learned Beck¬ 
mann. He also wrote at this time, in Latin, a trea ise on 
music, and projected some other works. After this, he quitted 
the military life, and traveled in Holland, Switzerland, France, 
and Italy, where, although it has been said that he saw Galileo 
at Florence, it does not appear that he visited him. In 1629 he 
settled in Holland, where he hoped to find more freedom and 
seclusion than elsewhere, to meditate on mathematics, me:a- 
physics, astronomy, and chemistry. In 1637 he produced his 
celebrated “ Discourse on the Method of Reasoning well, and 
of investigating Scientific Truth,” which contains treatises on 
metaphysics, dioptrics, and geometry. In 1641 he published, in 


389 


DESOAKTES. 

Latin, his great metaphysical work, “ Meditationes de Prima 
Philosophia.” These two works —the results of his meditative 
solitude—produced an immense sensation, and gave a wonderful 
impulse to philosophical inquiry in his own and succeeding 
times. “He performed the same service in the philosophy of 
mind that Bacon performed in natural science. Taking his 
departure from universal doubt, he found tiie basis of all posi¬ 
tive knowledge in self-consc'.ousness, expressed by the enthy- 
meme ‘I think; therefore I exist.’ His bold innovations and 
brilliant paradoxes excited much hostility as well as admiration. 
His book was condemned by the College of Cardinals at Borne; 
and Yoet, a professor of Utrecht, accusing Descartes of Atheism, 
instigated the civil power to persecute him, but his malice was 
partially frustrated.” 

In 1644 he published Ills “ Principles of Philosophy.” In this he 
propounds his theory of the Cosmos, and his famous Doctrine 
of Yortices, the main thesis of which doctrine is that the sun is 
the center of a vortex of an all-pervading ethereal fluid, whose 
whirling motion produces the revolution of the planets. In 
1647 the Prench court granted him a pension of 3,000 livres. 
Soon after this, to escape the religious persecution that was 
still brooding over him, he accepted an invitation from Chris¬ 
tina, Queen of Sweden, to go to Stockholm, where he obtained 
an asylum at her court, a pension, and an e ;tate. Here he was 
treated with much honor, the queen pursuing her studies under 
his direction at five o’clock in the morning. But the change in 
his habits, together with the rigor of the climate, was too much 
for his constitution, which had always been very delicate, even 
from his birth. A cold caught in one of his morning visits to 
Christina, produced inflammation of the lungs, which put an 
end to his existence (1650). Christina wept for him, had him 
interred in the cemetery for foreigners, and placed a long eulo- 
gium in his tomb. His remains were subsequently (1666) carried 
from Sweden into Prance, and buried with great ceremony in 
St. Genevieve du Mont. 

Descartes was a great but not a brave thinker. Indeed he 
was timid almost to servility; dreading lest the Church should 
scent out some heresy or other, even in his so-called proofs of 
the existence of a Deity; and having the fate of Galileo ever 


390 


DESCABTES. 


before his eyes, he refrained for a long time from publishing 
his astronomical treatise. “ He was even-tempered, placid, and 
studious not to give offence.” “His influence, which was 
almost universal in the seventeenth century, has declined since 
Gassendi reformed the philosophy of mind and Newton demon¬ 
strated his more simple physical principles. But he still has 
just and various claims to celebrity, in the noble thoughts, the 
precious truths, the wise maxims, which, along with some 
brilliant errors, he has transmitted to posterity.” 

“The vital portion of his system lies in this axiom; All clear 
ideas are true: whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is 
true. This axiom he calls the foundation of all science, the 
rule and measure of truth. The next step to be taken was to 
determine the rules for the proper detection of these ideas; and 
these rules he has laid down as follows: — 

i. Never to accept anything as true, but what is evidently so. 

.ii. To divide every question into as many separate 

questions as possible.(Analysis.) — hi. To conduct 

the examination with order.(Synthesis.) — iv. To 

make such exact calculations, and such circumspections, as to 
be confident that nothing essential has been omitted.” But 
“in the four rules, .... we have only half of Descartes’ 

system: the psychological half.There is, in truth^ 

another half of Descartes’ system; equally important, or nearly 

so; we mean the Mathematical or Deductive Method. 

He first wished to find a basis of certitude —a starting point: 
this he found in consciousness. He next wished to find a 
method of certitude: this he found in mathematics.” 

Time and space preclude all but the above bare outline of 
Descartes’ famous method. We shall close this short and very 
unworthy tribute to the memory of a great thinker in the words 
of Hallam 

“He worked a more important change in speculative philos¬ 
ophy than any who had preceded him since the revival of 
learning; for there could be no comparison in that age between 
the celebrity and effect of his writings and those of Lord 
Bacon.” 



JOHN LOCKE. 


391 


JOHN LOCKE. 


This celebrated English philosopher was born at ‘Wrington, 
Somersetshire, in 1632. He -was educated at Westminster school, 
and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon distinguished 
himself by his talents and endowments. “He left Oxford with 
no very favorable views of the system of instruction there 
pursued. He had, indeed, been far more indebted for his 
mental culture to his own efforts than to the skill or labor of 
his tutors, and was himself an example of that self-teaching 
which in his writings he so strongly recommends.” “A univer¬ 
sity which piqued itself on being behind the age was scarcely 
the fit place for an original thinker. Locke was ill at ease 
there. The philosophy upheld there w r as Scholasticism. On 
such a food a mind like his could not nourish itself. . . . 
Disgusted with the disputes which usurped the title of philoso¬ 
phy, Locke principally devoted himself to medicine while at 
Oxford. His proficiency is attested by two very different per¬ 
sons [Dr. Sydenham and Lord Shaftesbury] in two very dif¬ 
ferent ways.” A close intimacy sprang up between him and 
the latter, whom he had cured of a hitherto untractable abscess 
in the chest. Locke accompanied the Earl to London, and 
resided principally in his house. This was the occasion of his 
attention being drawn to politics, and of his profitable visits to 
Holland, France, and Germany, wdiere he made the acquaint¬ 
ance of several distinguished men. 

In 1670 he planned his great work —the “ Essay Concerning 
the Human Understanding.” The original copy, still preserved, 
and in his own handwriting, is dated 1671. But it was not 
published until 1690, (three years after the appearance of New¬ 
ton’s “ Principia ”) — an evidence of his great caution (evinced 
also in his other works) with respect to offering his views to 
the public. 

The leading position of his Essaij is that the human mind 
has no innate ideas, and that all ideas , with their various com- 


JOHN LOCKE. 


?92 

binations, are to be referred to sensation and reflection. “He' 
made the senses the source of all our sensuous knowledge; our 
ideal knowledge (so to speak) he derived from reflection,” of 
which latter faculty he says, “ though it be not sense, as having¬ 
nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and 
might properly enough be called internal sense.” 

The positive spirit of Bacon has already been touched upon;, 
that of Locke is apparent from the following words: “If by 
this inquiry into the nature of the understanding I can dis¬ 
cover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what thinga 
they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, 
I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of 
man to be more cautious in meddling with the things exceeding 
its comprehension, to stop when it is at the utmost extent of 
its tether, and sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things 
which upon examination are found to be beyond the reach of 
our capacities. We should not then perhaps be so forward, out 
of an affectation of universal knowledge, to raise questions and 
perplex ourselves and others about things to which our under¬ 
standings are not suited, and of which we cannot frame in our 
minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or wffiereof (as it has 
perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. . 

. . Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads and 
employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if 
they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitutions, and 
throw away the blessings their hands are filled with because 
they are not big enough to grasp everything. 

“We shall not have much reason to complain of the nar¬ 
rowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what 
may be of use to us, for of that they are very capable. . . . 
It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant who would 
not attend to his business by candle-light, to plead that he had 
not broad sunshine. The candle that is set up within us shines 
bright enough for all our purposes.” 

Bacon had already said: “The real cause and root of almost 
all the evils in science is this: that falsely magnifying and 
extolling the powers of the mind, we seek not its true helps.’* 
Locke echoed the same all-important truth in the following: 
weighty statement: 


JOHN LOCKE. 


393. 


“When we know our own strength we shall the better 
know what to undertake with hopes of success. . . . It is of 
great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though 
he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is 
well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom at 
such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution 
him against running upon any shoals that may ruin him. . . . 
This was that which gave the first rise to this Essay concerning' 
the Understanding; for I thought that the first step towards 
satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to 
run into, was to take a survey of our own understandings, and 
to see to what things they were adapted. Till that was done I 
suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for 
satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most 
concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast 
ocean of being; as if that boundless extent were the natural 
and undoubted possession of our understandings, wherein there' 
is nothing exempt from its decisions, or that escaped its com¬ 
prehension. Thus men extending their inquiries beyond their 
capacities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths* 
where they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they 
raise questions and multiply disputes, which, never coming to 
any clear resolution, are proper only to continue and increase 
their doubts and to confirm them at last in perfect skepticism. 

Thus Locke decisively separated himself from the ontolo- 
gists — the metaphysicians who treated of a thousand and one 
unverifiable and really unthinkable questions of Whence, Why,, 
Wherefore, and Whither. And this “departure ” of the great 
philosopher is not only a historical land-mark in the field of 
thought; it also gave the tone to his subsequent speculations,. 
In his magnificent essay he proved himself one of the most 
distinguished pioneers of Scientific as against Metaphysical 
Philosophy. He was the great master of the Science of Psychol¬ 
ogy, which has of late years made such rapid advancements. 

Among his other publications may be mentioned three- 
“Letters on Toleration;” a “Treatise on Education;” three 
elaborate Letters in defense o: his great “Essay,” against 
Bishop Stillingfleet; a Treatise on Government; and a posthu¬ 
mous work on the “ Conduct of the Human Understanding.”- 


394 


JOHN LOCKE. 


Locke’s friendship for Shaftesbury, and the liberal opinions 
he was known to hold, drew upon him the displeasure of the 
Court. He was deprived of his studentship [at Oxford] by a 
a very arbitrary act. Nor did persecution stop there. He was 
soon forced to quit England, and find refuge at the Hague. 
Here also the anger of the king pursued him, and he was 
obliged to retreat further into Holland. It was there he pub¬ 
lished his celebrated Letter on Toleration. It was not until 
1688, after the Revolution, that he returned to his native land, 
where, soon after his arrival, he was offered a high diplomatic 
office, which he declined on account of his feeble health. His 
Essay met with immense success, running through six e>]itions 
in fourteen years, and that in times when the sale of books 
was much slower than at present. As a matter of course, it 
roused great opposition, especially among the clergy and the 
scholastics; but its able defense, in the Letters to Stillingfleet, 
more than vindicated the author’s great reputation for common 
sense and clear reasoning, and still further promulgated his 
philosophic views. His health had always been delicate. The 
asthmatic affection under which he had been suffering for many 
years, having become more aggravated, he resigned in 1700 the 
post of commissioner of appeals which he had held for about 
ten years under the government, and retired to Oates, in Essex. 
Here he spent the remainder of his days at the house of Sir 
Erancis Masham, in the arms of whose accomplished wife and 
his own devoted friend, the well-known Lady Masham, the 
daughter of the celebrated Dr. Cudworth, he expired, on the 
twenty-eighth of October, 1704, in the seventy-second year of 
his age. 


SPINOZA. 


395 


SPINOZA. 

Baeuch Despinoza, better known under the name of Benedict 
iSpinoza — as rendered by himself in the Latin language—was 
born at Amsterdam, in Holland, on the 24th of Nov., 1632. He 
was the eldest of three children — himself, and two sisters, 
Miriam and Bebecca. His parents were Jews of the middle 
class, and were in comfortable, if not affluent circumstances. 
His father was originally a Spanish merchant, who, to escape 
persecution, had emigrated to Holland. He is reputed to have 
been a man of excellent understanding, and of this he gave 
evidence in the c are he took to secure to his son the best 
education the Jewish schools of Amsterdam afforded. The 
education of the Jews was almost exclusively religious, the Old 
Testament and the Talmud forming their principal studies. 
The classical languages of Greece and Rome had no place in 
the curriculum of the Jewish seminaries. Arithmetic was 
taught, but geometry and mathematics were generally neglected. 
The pupils who evinced extraordinary aptitude were selected 
for studies in higher branches of education, with a view of 
becoming teachers themselves. Young Benedict, a remarkably 
quick and inquisitive boy, found means to supply himself with 
Latin, by aid of a German teacher, and afterwards with 
Greek. 

At a very early age he became acquainted with the writings 
of Descartes. At fourteen this youth was already remarkable 
for Biblical and Talmudic lore, and great hopes were enter¬ 
tained that he would some day occupy a distinguished place 
among Jewish teachers. But these hopes were turned to fears 
when they saw that young and pertinacious spirit pursue his 
undaunted inquiries into whatever region they conducted him, 
and found him putting difficulties to them which they, Rabbins 
and philosophers, were unable to solve. The curious and eager 
mind of the boy shot ahead of their limits; doubts, which if 
they entered his tutor’s minds had only entered to be stifled, 


396 


SPINOZA. 


were to him the unsuspicious dawnings of intellectual life. His 
questions perplexed and annoyed his teachers, who found in 
him material that could not be fashioned into orthodox shape. 

At first he endeavored to find some ground of reconciliation 
between Reason and Scripture, but in vain. “I aver,’ he says 
in the “Tractatus,” “that though I long sought for something 
of the sort, I could never find it. And although nurtured in 
the current views of the Sacred Scriptures, and my mind filled 
with their teachings, I was nevertheless compelled at length to 
break with my early beliefs.” Spinoza was to be deterred 
neither by threats nor by sophistications. He found in the Old 
Testament no mention of the doctrine of immortality; there 
was complete silence on the point. He soon became reticent 
and cautious in his intercourse with the elders of the congre¬ 
gation, abandoned regular attendance at the synagogue, and 
came to be regarded as a perverse youth. 

Two of his school-fellows, irritated at his intellectual super¬ 
iority, and to curry favor with the Rabbins, reported his heresy 
with the usual fertility of exaggeration. He was denounced to 
the heads of the Jewish synagogue as an apostate from the true 
faith. Cited to appear before the elders, he obeyed with gay 
carelessness, denying some of the statements imputed to him. 
His judges, finding him obstinate in his opinions, threatened 
him with excommunication; he answered with a sneer. The 
contumacious youth then wholly withdrew from the synagogue 
— a step which greatly mortified his enemies, and rendered futile 
all the terrible threats of excommunication which had been 
made against him. Dreading his ability, and Ihe force of his 
example, the synagogue made him an offer of .in annual pen¬ 
sion of a thousand florins, if he would only consent to be silent, 
and assist from time to time at their ceremonies. 

On the 6th of July, 1736, the excited men of Israel assembled 
in the Jewish synagogue at Amsterdam, and the dread anath¬ 
ema was pronounced against the recusant Spinoza. The exact 
nature of the malediction pronounced upon this occasion, while 
lighted tapers were reversed in vessels of blood, can be seen 
from the following copy of the curse, which was obtained from 
the Secretary of the Portugese Jewish Church at Amsterdam, 
and rendered into English by Dr. Willis: 


SPINOZA. 


397 


“With the judgment of the angels, and the sentence of the 
saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse, and cast out Baruch 
de Spinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting, in 
presence of the sacred books with the six hundred and thirteen 
precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the anathema 
wherewith Joshua anathematized Jericho; the malediction 
wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions 
written in the Book of Law. Let him be accursed by day, and 
accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down, and 
accursed in his rising up, accursed in going out, and accursed 
in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowl¬ 
edge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn 
henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses writ¬ 
ten in the Book of the Law, and raze out his name from under 
the sky; may the Lord sever him for evil from all the tribes of 
Israel, weigh him with all the maledictions of the firmament 
•contained in the Book of the Law, and may all ye who are 
•obedient to the Lord your God be saved this day. Hereby, 
then, are all admonished,^ that none hold converce with him 
by word of mouth; none hold communion with him by writing; 
that no one do him any service; no one abide under the same 
roof with him; no one approach within four cubits length of 
him, and no one read any documents dictated by him, or writ¬ 
ten by his hand.” 

And thus the Jews of the synogogue at Amsterdam took 
leave of their erring brother, Benedict Spinoza. In the words 
of Matthew Arnold: “They remained children of Israel, and 
he became a child of modern Europe.” When informed of the 
excommunication, he is said to have replied: “Well and good; 
but this will force me to nothing I should not have been ready 
to do without it.” No orthodox Jew could shelter beneath his 
roof one under the ban of excommunication, even though his 
own son. The young truth-seeker had therefore to quit his 
home, endeared to him by all the tender, gracious memories of 
childhood; to be an outcast forever from all he held dear, and 
to be avoided, even in the public streets as a contaminated rep¬ 
robate. Like the young and sensitive Shelley, who afterwards 
imitated him, he found himself alone in this busy world, with 
no other guides through its perplexing labyrinths than sincerity 


398 


SPINOZA. 


and self-dependence. His fine nature must have suffered 
deeply, but he was too proud to let it be known; all his anguish 
was borne with noble fortitude and heroic placidity of demeanor. 

Spinoza’s classical acquirements were now of advantage to 
him. lie secured a situation in the educational establishment, 
of Dr. Francis Van den Ende, amongst whose pupils were the 
sons of some of the wealthiest and most distinguished citizens. 
Van den Ende was a learned and accomplished man, and of 
irreproachable character; but he was suspected of adding a. 
grain of Atheism to every dose of Latin. He undertook to 
instruct Spinoza in Latin, and to give him board and lodging, 
on condition that he should subsequently aid him in instruct¬ 
ing his scholars. This, the outcast accepted with joy; for though 
master of the Dutch, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and Portuguese^ 
languages he had long felt the need of Latin. 

The works of Descartes now fell into his hands; these he 
studied with intense avidity. It was the custom for the youth 
in the Jewish schools to be initiated into some mechanical art, 
as well as instructed in book lore. Spinoza had learnt the art. 
of grinding and polishing lenses for optical purposes — specta¬ 
cles, microscopes, and telescopes —and had attained to such a 
proficiency in the business that his manufactures were readily 
disposed of, their sale producing sufficient to supply his modest 
wants. At this trade he labored, earning his bread by the 
sweat of his brow. 

Whi e he remained in Amsterdam he had to brook the- 
slights and scowls of his former friends. But he had to exper¬ 
ience to what further lengths religous intolerance could go. A 
hot-b'ooded zealot waylaid him one night, and attempted his 
a summation. Happily for Spinoza, however, he saw the ges- 
tur ‘ of li e villianous fanatic as he raised his arm to strike, 
d by a rap'd movement prevented a fatal blow. The dagger- 
us! was received through the collar, and the intended vic- 
: n escaped w th a slight wound on the neck. He long pre- 
ed the oat as an illustration of the terrible spirit of super- 
on and fanaticism. Theological hate is never satisfied, 
i' '• ‘ xeommunication, bribes and flattery, and attempted 
ion, all had now failed to move the obstinate heretic, 
eist resource they petitioned for his expulsion from the 


SPINOZA. 


399 


city. But Amsterdam was a free city where all religious de¬ 
nominations were tolerated, and there was no precedent for 
such ban : shment. Nevertheless, the authorities, unwilling to 
disoblige so powerful a section of the community as the Jew¬ 
ish Synod recommended his temporary banishment. 

Towards the close of 1656, Spinoza left his natal city. He 
was then in his four-and-twentieth year; and resolving to devote 
his life to study, he retired to Bhynsburg, where, still pursuing 
his trade he gave every spare hour to philosophy. He had 
found shelter with a Christian friend, whose hospitality over¬ 
leapt the narrow bounds of sectarian intolerance. The name 
of this good man is unrecorded, but his house still remains, 
and the lane in which it stands is still known under the name 
of Spinoza Lane. 

In 1664 Spinoza left Bhynsburg for Yoorburg, within about a 
league of the Hague. He took quarters in the house of a 
painter which overlooked the Pavilion Canal; and there he 
passed the remainder of his days. Though he now had many 
sincere friends, and their purses were open to him, he con¬ 
tinued to endure a hard and griping kind of poverty. The her¬ 
itage, which on his father’s death fell to him, he resigned to 
his sisters. A large property which his friend Simon de Yries 
intended leaving him, he refused to accept, making Simon alter 
his will in favor of his brother. The pension offered him if he 
would dedicate his next work to Louis XIY. he also declined. 
He wished to assert his independence by working and gaining 
his own subsistence. 

“It approaches the incredible,” says Colerus, “with how 
little in the shape of meat and drink he appears to have been 
satisfied; and it was from no necessity that he was constrained 
tp live so poorly; but he was by nature abstemious.” His ordi¬ 
nary daily diet consisted of a basin of milk porridge, with 
a little butter, costing about three half-pence, and a draught of 
beer, costing an additional penny. Some days he lived on a 
basin of gruel, with some raisins, which cost him two-pence- 
half-penny. “And,” says the pastor Colerus, “although often 
invited to dinner, he preferred the scanty meal that he found at 
home, to dining sumptuously at the expense of another.” This 
was the man who was branded by his contemporaries with the 


400 


SPINOZA. 


names of Atheist ami Epicurean. As some one has observed, 

“ his Epicureanism sta ids confest to gods and men at the mag¬ 
nificent rate of two pe .cu-half-penny per day.” 

An instance is related which shows that with all his love of 
truth and hatred of error, Spinoza manifested no inclination to 
obtrude his views upon others, or to trouble the minds of 
dhose unfitted to receive his doctrines. The wife of the painter 
in whose house he lodged being one day greatly troubled as 
to the prospect of her soul, inquired of her learned lodger 
whether he thought her form of religion sufficient for her sal¬ 
vation. ‘‘Your religion,” he answered, “is a good religion; 
you have no occasion to seek after another; neither need you 
doubt of your eternal welfare so as, along with your pious 
observances, you continue to lead a life of peace in charity to 
all ” — a beautiful answer to a woman who, if not wise, he saw 
was virtuous. 

Spinoza's devotion to study, with his abstemiousness and 
want of exercise, at last undermined his constitution. Towards 
the close of his life he appears also to have been afflicted with 
pulmonary consumption. He frequently complained to corres¬ 
pondents of not feeling well; and in the beginning of 1G77 he 
grew more seriously indisposed. On Saturday the twentieth 
of February he wrote to his friend, Dr. Louis Meyer, requesting 
a visit. Early the next morning the doctor arrived, and found 
his patient worse than was imagined. The sick philosoidier 
partook of a little chicken broth, and the doctor remained in 
attendance with him while the painter and his family went to 
church. They never saw their friend in life again. When they 
came home they learned with sorrow and surprise that he had 
expired about three o’clock in the presence of the physician, 
who had seized what money there was on the table, together 
with a silver-handled knife, and left the body without further 
care. 

So died, in his forty-fifth year, in the full vigor and maturity 
of his intellect , Benedict Spinoza. ‘ Offer up with me a lock of 
hair to the manes of the holy but repudiated Spinoza!” 
exclaimed Schleiermacher. “The great spirit of the world pen¬ 
etrated him; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the 
Universe his only and eternal love. He was filled with religion 

\ 


401 


SPINOZA. 

and religious feeling; and therefore it is that he stands alone, 
unapproachable; the master in his art, but elevated above the 
profane world, without adherents, and without even citizenship.” 

No adequate concepticm of Spinoza’s philosophy can be given 
in the brief space here at disposal; a few indications are only 
ventured. He was rather a Pantheist than an Atheist, although 
Yoltaire says that he was an Atheist and taught Atheism. 
When asked, “What name do you attach to infinite substance?” 
he re lied, “God.” It is to be regretted that he did not coin 
a word more strictly in adherence to his definition, or used 
one less maltreated by the masses. He said, “I can only take 
cognizance of one substance (of which I am part) having infin¬ 
ite attributes of extension and thought. I take cognizance of 
substance by its modes, and in my consciousness of existence. 
Everything is a mode of the attribute of extension, every 
thought, wish, or feeling, a mode of the attribute of thought. 
I call this substance, with infinite attributes, God.” 

Spinoza might be considered, logically, an Atheist, though 
his education and early impressions tended to shape this into 
a rather dimly defined Pantheism. There is but one substance— 
one absolute existence — call it what we will. He agreed with 
Descartes in these three vital positions, i. The basis of all cer¬ 
titude is consciousness, n. Whatever is clearly perceived in 
consciousness must therefore be necessarily true; and distinct 
ideas are true ideas, in. Consequently metaphysical problems 
are susceptible of mathematical demonstration. Spinoza’s 
method was a further development of the system of Descartes. 
The following are the famous seven axioms of his philosophy. 

I. “Everything which is, is in itself, or in some other thing. 

II. That which cannot be conceived through another, must 
be conceived through itself. 

III. Erom a given determinate cause the effect necessarily 
follows; and vice versa , if no determinate cause be given, no 
effect can follow. 

IY. The knowledge of an effect depends on the knowledge 
of the cause, and implies it. 

Y. Things that have nothing in common with each other 
eannot be understood by means of each other, i. e., the concep¬ 
tion of one does not involve the conception of the other. 


402 


SPINOZA. 


YI. A true idea must agree with its object. 

VII. Whatever can be clearly conceived as non-existent, does 
not, in its essence, involve existence.” 

“We must not, however, longer linger with this great and 
good man, and his philosophy. A brave and simple man, 
earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy 
the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain 
as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation — 
a system that has been decried, for nearly two centuries, as 
the most iniquitous and blasphemous of human invention; and 
which has now, within the last sixty years, become the ac¬ 
knowledged parent of a whole nation’s philosophy, ranking 
among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious 
intellects of the age. We look into his works with calm ear¬ 
nestness, and read there another curious page of human his¬ 
tory: the majestic struggle with the mysteries of existence has 
failed, as it always must fail; but the struggle demands our 
warmest approbation, and the man our ardent sympathy. 
Spinoza stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose 
shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve 
to warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which 
hundreds of their brethren have perished.” 

Says Maccall: “In the glorious throng of heroic names, there 
are few nobler than Spinoza. Apart altogether from the esti¬ 
mate we may form of his philosophy, there is something 
unspeakably interesting in the life and the character of the 
man. In his metaphysical system there are two things exceed¬ 
ingly distinct. There is, first, the immense and prodigious, but 
terrible mathematical skeleton, which his subtle intellect binds 
up and throws as calmly into space as we drop a pebble into 
the water, and whose bones, striking against the wreck of all 
that, is sacred in belief, or bold in speculation, rattle a wild 
response to our wildest phantasies, and drive us almost to 
think in despair that thinking is madness; and there is, sec¬ 
ondly, the divinest division of the infinite, and the divinest 
incense which the intuition of the infinite ever yet poured at 
the altar of creation.” 


THOMAS BURNET. 


403 


THOMAS BURNET. 

Thomas Burnet, like Dean Swift, was an advanced thinker. 
Like Swift, he was Infidel at heart, but like Swift he chose 
to retain his connection with the Established Church of Eng¬ 
land, for the perquisites, advantages, and emoluments which 
she had in her gift. He at one time came near being made 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and probably would have been, had 
not his heretical writings, in which he discredited the Mosaic 
account of creation and the origin of man upon the earth, 
been brought up against him. 

Thomas Burnet was born in the year 1635. At the age of 
forty-five he published in Latin a work entitled “The Sacred 
Theory of the Earth, containing an account of the original of 
the earth, and of all the general changes which it has already 
undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of all things.” 
This book gave the author's idea of the origin of the world, 
and is remarkable as one of the first grand prophecies of geol¬ 
ogy. Although it has been superceded by subsequent works it 
produced quite an impression among the learned men of the 
day. It depicted the various strata of the mountainous regions 
and compared them in different countries, and gave views 
regarding the vast changes that have occurred in the Universe, 
tracing the rise of most of the phenomena from the two 
elements, fire and water. Burnet thought that at one time ihe 
whole of matter was in a fluid state, revolving round a central 
sun until the heavier particles sunk into the middle and formed 
the stony strata which support the earth, and over which the 
lighter fluids and liquids aggregated, until the heat of the sun 
effectually separated water from land. An English translation 
of this rather poetical and elegant work was published in 1691. 

The most interesting work of Burnet’s was his “Archaeologia 
Philosophica,” which was —as were all of his works — written 
in Latin. It excited much attention and opposition at the time 
on account of his free remarks and satirical comments relative 


404 


THOM AS BURNET. 


to the Mosaic Dispensation, and many parts of the Jewish 
Scriptures. He proved that many parts cf the Mosaic account 
of the creation were inconsistent with reason. The most < hari- 
table view he took of this part of the Bible is that it was a 
pious allegory and not a truthful statement of the events that 
actually occurred. He wrote exclusively for the clergy, and it 
was doubtless his wish to liberalize them so far as was in his 
power. It was for this reason that he wrote entirely in Latin. 
He seemed not to be anxious to have his views endorsed 
directly by the masses, and dreaded the effect they would have 
upon the laity. Fragments of his works were translated by 
his envious compeers, and were placed before the common peo¬ 
ple that they might see how dangerous a man Dr. Burnet 
really was. The free criticism which he exercised in “Archmol- 
ogia Philosophical’ doubtless, as remarked, prevented his reach¬ 
ing the superior prelacy. 

Although his accession to the Liberal ranks may justly be 
regarded as a decided acquisition, it is nevertheless to be 
regretted that he was not more bold and outspoken — more like 
Toland, and Tindal, and Whiston, who sought not to conceal 
their real convictions. 

Burnet died in 1715 at the age of eighty years. After his 
death, two of his works were translated and published in English, 
to wit: “ On Christian Faith and Duties,” and “On the State of 
the Dead and the Keviving.” The first threw overboard the 
whole of the speculative tenets of the Bible, and advised the 
clergy to treat them as a dead letter. The latter shadowed 
forth a scheme of Deism, and scouted the idea of a hell. 

Considering the early day in which Dr. Burnet wrote, that 
the stake and fagot and torture-machines of endless device as 
remedies for men who presumed to think for themselves, and 
to speak and write as they thought, had not yet entirely 
passed out of use; that he was a high dignitary in the estab¬ 
lished Church of England, it is not, perhaps, to be wondered at 
that he was no more outspoken in uttering his dissent from 
that which bore the stamp of orthodoxy. Mental freedom and 
fearless utterance have gained since that day. It is more a 
marvel that the doctor was as brave as he was. 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


405 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


This illustrious English mathematician, astronomer, and phi¬ 
losopher was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, on the 
twenty-fifth of December, 1642, (old style,. He was the post¬ 
humous and only child of Isaac Newton, a farmer, who died 
in 1642. “He attended the schools of Skillington and Stoke for 
several years, and about the age of twelve entered the gram¬ 
mar-school of Grantham. There he manifested much mechanical 
ingenuity by the construction of a wind-mill, a water-clock, 
a sun-dial, and other pieces of mechanism. He also wrote 
verses in his boyhood.” But he made little progress in his 
school studies proper, until one day “ the boy who was above 
him having given him a severe kick in the stomach, from 
which he suffered great pain, he labored incessantly till he got 
above him in the school, and from that time continued to rise 
until he was the head boy.” 

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sub-sizar, in 
June, 1661, before which date it does not appear that he had 
been a profound student of mathematics. It has been stated 
that he commenced the study of “Euclid’s Elements,” but he 
found the first proposition so self-evident that he threw the book 
aside as too trifling. He took it up again, however, and soon 
exhausted it,—the most difficult problems being from the first 
easy and familiar to him, — and then proceeded to the study of 
Descartes’ Geometry and Kepler’s Optics. In reading these 
and all other books, he made marginal notes as he went along; 
and this always continued to be his method of study. In 1664 
he read Wallis’s “Arithmetic of the Infinite,” and discovered 
the method of infinite series, or the binomial theorem, which 
enabled him to compute the area of curves and to solve with 
ease problems which before were either insoluble or very diffi¬ 
cult. In 1665, at the age of twenty-two, he took his degree of 
B. A., and probably in the same year discovered the differential 


406 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


calculus, or method of fluxions, which he afterwards brought to 
perfection, though his claim to the discovery was unjustly con¬ 
tested by Leibnitz, who obtained a knowledge of it in 1676 from 
the author himself. About the same time also he applied him¬ 
self to the grinding of optic-glasses for telescopes, and having 
procured a glass prism in order to try the phenomena of colors 
lately discovered by Grima'di, the result of his observation was 
his new theory of light and colors, based upon his grand dis¬ 
covery that light is not homogeneous , hut consists of rays of dif¬ 
ferent refrangibility. This discovery marks one of the greatest 
epochs in the annals of experimental science. He also per¬ 
ceived that this different refrangibility was the real cause of 
the imperfection of refracting telescopes. 

When the plague broke out in 1665, he retired to his native 
place, where, secluded from books and conversation, his active 
and penetrating mind conceived that hint which gave rise to 
his celebrated System of the Universe. “He was sitting alone 
in bis garden, where some apples falling from a tree [to the 
ground, and not on his head or nose,] led his thoughts to the 
subject of gravity; and reflecting on the power of that prin¬ 
ciple, he began to consider that, as it is not diminished at the 
remotest distance from the centre of the earth, it may be 
extended as far as the moon, and to all the planetary bodies.” 
But he abandoned the subject for the time, after an attempt to 
verify his theory by a calculation which failed because he had 
employed an erroneous measure of the earth’s * adius. 

“On his return to the University in 1667, he was chosen fel¬ 
low o: the college, and took his degree of M.A. Two years 
later he succeeded Dr. Barrow in the mathematical professor¬ 
ship. on which occasion he read a course of optical lectures in 
Latin. These he had not finished in 1671, when he was chosen 
fellow of the Boyal Society, to which learned body he commu¬ 
nicated his theory of light and colors, which was followed by 
his account of a new telescope invented by him, and other 
interesting papers. The second telescope, made with his own 
hands, is still preserved in the library of the Boyal Society.” 
About this time his Emission Theory of light involved him in a 
controversy with Hooke and Huyghens, who maintained the 
Undulation Theory. 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


407 


On the occasion of the great comet in 1680, he resumed his 
investigations into the subject of gravity. In 1684 he resumed 
his calculations in reference to the moon’s motion, employing 
this time Picard’s more accurate measure of the earth’s radius. 
He then reduced to a demonstration the great truth that the 
orbit of the moon is curved by the same force which causes 
bodies to fall on the surface of the earth. The tradition is thatr 
as his calculations drew to a close, he became so agitated at 
the thought of his impending discovery that he was obliged to 
request a friend to finish them. His best biographer, however, 
says “this anecdote is not supported by what is known of 
Newton’s character.” So this tradition, like a host of others, 
is very doubtful, but be that as it may, he announced the 
great discovery to the Royal Society in 1685 by his treatise “De 
Motu.” This was the germ of his greatest work, the “Prin¬ 
cipia,” composed in 1685-86, and which Laplace denominated as 
“preeminent above all other productions of the human intel¬ 
lect.” This work was published in 1687, either by the Royal 
Society or by Dr. Halley, under the full title of “ Philosophise 
Naturalis Principia Mathematica,” (“The Mathematical Princi¬ 
ples of Natural Philosophy.”) It consists of three books—the 
Rrst and second “On the Motion of Bodies,” and the third “On 
the System of the "World.” “The great discovery,” says Sir 
David Brewster, “which characterizes the ‘ Principia ’ is that 
of the principle of universal gravitation, that every particle of 
matter in the Universe is attracted by, or gravitates to, every other 
particle of matter, with a force inversely proportioned to the 
squares of their distance .” 

In 1687, when the privileges of the University of Cambridge 
were attacked by James II., Newton was appointed to appear 
as one of her delegates in the High Commission Court, where 
he pleaded with so much ability that the king thought proper 
to stop his proceedings. In 1689-90 he represented Cambridge 
in the Convention Parliament, and maintained the principles of 
civil and religious liberty in that critical period of revolution. 
In 1689 he became acquainted with John Locke, with whom he 
associated on friendly terms and corresponded until his death. 
Locke and others tried to procure for him some permanent 
^appointment, but without success. Though satiated with fame, 


408 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


Newton had gained no pecuniary benefit by his writings, and 
had received no mark of national gratitude for his discoveries. 
In 1694 or 1695, however, he was appointed Warden of the Mint 
by his friend Montague, Earl of Halifax, He afterwards became 
Master of that office, which place he held with great honor till 
his death. The same year he was chosen President of the 
Royal Society, which office he retained during twenty-five 
years. He was also a member of the Academy of Sciences at 
Paris, having been chosen in 1699. In 1704 he published his- 
great work on “Opticks, or a Treatise c n the Reflexions, Re¬ 
fractions, Inflexions, and Colors of Light.” This had been 
written many years earlier. It was afterwards translated into* 
several languages, and went through many editions. The story 
that some of his most precious manuscripts were burned 
through the agency of his little dog Diamond seems to be. 
unfounded. Brewster says, “ he never had any communion, 
with dogs or cats.” 

In 1705 Queen Anne bestowed on him the honor of Knight¬ 
hood. In the succeeding reign, he was very often at Court, 
and the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, fre¬ 
quently conversed with him on philosophical subjects. In 1728- 
he published “The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended,” 
and in 1733, “Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and 
the Apocalypse of Saint John.” He also wrote an essay on the 
interpolation in the first epistle of John, relating to the three 
witnesses. 

He was never married, and perhaps had never time to think 
of it, being constantly immersed in the profoundest studies, 
and not being willing to have them broken by domestic con¬ 
cerns. 

During his later years he resided in London, where he lived in 
handsome style, and kept six servants. He was very generous 
in the use of money, for which he is said to have had a great 
contempt. On one occasion he offered his physician, as a fee, 
a handful of guineas out of his coat-pocket. He often forgot to- 
eat, and it was necessary for his servants to remind him of his 
meals, so habitually absorbed in meditation had he become. 
After enjoying an uncommon share of health until late in life, 
he was afflicted with a very painful disease for years previous- 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


409 


to his death. His last twenty days were attended with inces¬ 
sant pain and the most severe spasms of agony. But he never 
expressed the slighest impatience. After his death, March 20, 
1727, his body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was- 
interred in Westminster Abbey/, the Lord Chancellor, two< 
Dukes, and three Earls bearing the pall. A stately monument 
was erected over his remains, at the entrance of the choir. 

Towards the end of the third book of the “Principia” Newton 
had written : “ What the real substance of anything is we know 
not.” And near the end of his life he said: “I know not what 
I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been 
only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself 
in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell 
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undis¬ 
covered before me.” Well would it be for thousands of small 
minds, lay and clerical, who pretend to know all about Infinity,. 
Eternity, the Universe, the Essence of things, and God, if they 
possessed only a minimum of the great Sir Isaac’s modesty! 

Whether terrestrial or celestial gravitation be a force in the 
purely scientific sense of the word or not, is a mooted question 
among many physicists and astronomers. It does not seem to* 
correlate with any of the known forces; at least, this correlation 
has not yet been discovered or demonstrated; and until that is 
done, there will always be a doubt about its being itself a force. 
But whether it be a force or not, the discovery by Newton of 
wuat has been aptly called “the Law of Gravitation,” has. 
opened up the stupendous science of Astronomy to researches 
which are limited only by the means of calculation which 
mathematicians possess. And from this has followed in strictest 
development and demonstration all those grand truths which 
compose the physical branch of Astronomy. 

Galileo was the first who proved, by experiments, that the 
acceleration of falling bodies is uniform, and that the spaces- 
through which they descend are consequently as the squares of 
the time of the descent. Terrestrial gravity acts equally on all 
bodies, that is to say, impresses on all of them an equal quan¬ 
tity of motion, whatever their nature may be. Common experi¬ 
ence would seem to be at variance with this result. Light 
bodies, as feathers, paper, etc., fall slowly and irregularly; and 


410 


ISAAC NEWTON. 


some substances, as smoke, vapors, etc., even ascend. But this, 
as is well known, arises from the buoyancy of the atmosphere. 
In the exhausted receiver of an air-pump a piece of gold and 
a feather will fall with the same speed, and strike the bottom 
at the same time. Gravitation, as applied to the celestial 
bodies, when we consider its effects, enables us to form many 
conclusions as to its nature, mode of action, and influence. It 
is transmitted from body to body instantaneously , and not suc¬ 
cessively; it regulates the motions and determines the inequali¬ 
ties and perturbations of the moon and the planets; it causes 
the precession of the equinoxes; it produces the tidal action; 
it determines the figure of the earth. It may, indeed, turn out 
to be the one general law of all phenomena. 

It is true that Tycho Brahe (though opposing the Copernican 
system), and Kepler, with his wonderful Three Laws, etc., etc., 
had greatly advanced this “celestial science.” But they, (as 
well as many other present star-gazers indeed,) have been so 
historically absorbed, so to speak, in the greater Newton, that 
they have not been assigned biographical notices in this volume. 
The reader is specially directed to study these great men and 
their works from other sources. 

This very imperfect sketch of a King in Science may not 
justly be closed without stating that about the year 1692, and at 
several times thereafter until his death, reports were circulated 
that Newton was insane. There can be no doubt that in his 
later years he showed unmistakable signs of dotage, particu¬ 
larly noticeable in his domestic whims and “prophetic” studies. 
But what was all this but a mere spot on the sun of his intel¬ 
lectual and moral grandeur, simply showing that that mighty 
brain of his, which had illumined the great mystery of the 
Universe, was approaching the “dead-star” cold and gloom of 
the great leveler of worlds and men — Death! Humanity inher¬ 
its his light. When we round out his character, we can only 
think of the great, and good, and untitled Isaac Newton. 


LEIBNITZ. 


411 


LEIBNITZ. 


This universal genius was born at Leipsic, July 6, 1646. His 
lather was professor of jurisprudence in the Leipsic University, 
but died when his son was six years old. At the age of fifteen, 
young Leibnitz began his studies at the same university, whence 
he removed to Jena. In 1664 he took his degrees at Leipsic, 
and about the same time applied himself to the study of Greek 
philosophy. He chose the law as a profession, and took the 
degree of Doctor of Laws at Altorf. In 1667 he accepted the 
office of Councilor of State at Frankfort, and published his 
“ New Method of Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence,” a 
profound and ingenius essay on Roman law, which raised him 
to the first rank of philosophic writers. 

He now meditated the plan of an encyclopedia of science, 
and produced in rapid succession works on politics, religion, 
and philosophy, in Latin and French, for he scarcely ever 
wrote in his mother tongue. In his “Theory of Concrete 
Motion” and “Theory of Abstract Motion” he advanced new 
and bold theories in physics. Next year he visited Paris, where 
he met Cassini and Huyghens; and proceeding to London, he 
“became acquainted with Newton, Boyle, and other scientists, 
and was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1676 he was 
appointed by the Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg his librarian 
and counselor. It was about this time that he made the great 
discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, nearly identical with 
Newton’s method of fluxions. Leibnitz developed the power of 
this calculus with a marvelous felicity in its application to the 
theory of curves, to mechanical problems, etc. He subsequently 
engaged in a bitter dispute with Sir Isaac Newton, relative to the 
discovery of the method of fluxions, to the merit of which in¬ 
vention Leibnitz laid claim. The Royal Society of London (about 
1705) decided in favor of Newton; but M. Biot maintains that 
Leibnitz anticipated Newton in respect to publicity by a letter 
to Oldenburg in 1676, and accords to both the honor of the 


412 


LEIBNITZ. 


original invention. In 1693 Leibnitz wrote a treatise on geology* 
“which,” says Hallam, “no one can read without perceiving 
that of all the early geologists Leibnitz came nearer to the* 
theories which are most received in the English school at this, 
day.” In 1702 he was appointed president of the Academy of 
Sciences at Berlin. Charles YI. gave him the titles of Baron, 
and of Aulic Councilor, but could not prevail on him to enter 
his service. Peter the Great, of Russia, also, appointed him 
Privy Councilor of Justice, with a pension. Leibnitz was never 
married. His disposition was cheerful, his manners affable, and 
habits temperate. But for all that, he was vain and avaricious. 
He died at Hanover, November 14, 1716. 

Among his important works are ‘ New Essays on the Human 
Understanding,” in which he controverts the opinions of Locke; 
“Pre-established Harmony;” “Miscellaneous Questions of Phi¬ 
losophy and Mathematics;” “Metaphysical Tracts;” “Poems, 
in Latin and French. and his great and famous work, the 
“Essay of Theodicea,” in which he propounds his celebrated 
theory of Optimism, showing that the world, as it is, is the 
best world possible; or in other words, that among all possible 
plans of creation the best was chosen, the one which combines 
the greatest variety with the greatest order,—in which matter, 
space, and time are most wisely economized, Last, but not 
least, comes his “ Monadologie,” (1714) in which his metaphysical 
system is developed, and which is one of the most remarkable- 
monuments of his intellectual power. 

“Every man,” said F. Schlegel, “is born either a Platonist 
or an Aristotelian.” Leibnitz and Locke were examples of this- 
antagonism. “Our differences,” said Leibnitz, “are important. 
The question between us is whether the soul in itself is entirely 
empty, like tablets upon which nothing has been written 
(tabula rasa), according to Aristotle and the author of the Essay 
[concerning Human Understanding ]; and whether all that is 
there traced comes wholly from the senses and experience: or 
whether the soul originally contains the principles of several 
notions and doctrines, which the external objects only awaken, 
on occasions, as I believe with Plato.” On this great problem 
he furthermore wrote as follows:—“If any event can be fore¬ 
seen before it has been tried, it is manifest that we contribute 


LEIBNITZ. 


413 


•something for our own parts.The senses, although 

necessary for all actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us 
all of it; since the senses never can give but examples, that is 
to say, particular or individual truths. But all the examples 
which confirm a general truth, however numerous, do not suf¬ 
fice to establish the universal necessity of that truth; for it 
does not follow that that which has once occurred will always 
occur in the same way.” 

The real force of Leibnitz’s theory consists in the distinction 
which he makes between contingent and necessary truths, and 
in the resulting corollary which he emphasizes that experience 
alone could never furnish us with necessary truths. But most 
certainly, in the light of to-day, we are forced to admit that all 
;SO-cailed “necessary truths,” — for instance, those of Mathe¬ 
matics and Logic, of Causation and Generalization — are noth¬ 
ing more than ideas framed in our minds by the uniformity of 
our experience, said experience being more or less quickened 
into reflective activity by conditions of heredity and circum¬ 
stance. The upholders of the doctrines of “Necessary Truths,” 
“ Innate Ideas,” “Fundamental Laws of Belief,” “Categories 
of the Understanding,” etc., seem to be laboring under a great 
confusion of thought which might be well cleared up by a very 
little well-directed analysis. The great reconciliation between 
the schools of Locke and Leibnitz seems, after all, to be this; — 
“ The min 1 under certain circumstances, attains a point of view 
from which it can pronounce mechanical and other funda¬ 
mental truths to be necessary in their nature , though disclosed to 
ms by experience and observation.” 



414 


MATTHEW TINDAL, 


MATTHEW TINDAL. 


This English Deistical writer was born at Beer-Terres, in. 
Devonshire, 1656. His father was a clergyman, and had been 
presented the living at Beer-Terres by the University of Cam¬ 
bridge during the Civil Wars. Young Matthew was educated, 
at Oxford, where the degree of L.L.D. was conferred upon him 
at the age of twenty-eight. It appears that in the early part 
of his life he was quite unsettled in his belief. At first he was 
a zealous Bomanist; afterwards he became a Protestant. But 
espousing the cause of William III., he became wholly en¬ 
grossed in the political controversy raging at that time. He 
received the appointment of Commissioner of the Court for 
trying Foreigners. His famous essay on the “ Law of Nations ” 
was issued in 1693. 

In 1710 he became so involved in the great Trinitarian con¬ 
troversy which was then agitating England that his books were 
condemned by the House of Commons, and burnt by the hang¬ 
man. This indignity was resented by the publication of his 
“High Church Catechism,” in which he attacked with the most 
scathing satire the dominant priestly party. But his most nota¬ 
ble work, and by far his greatest, was his “Christianity as Old 
as the Creation.” This was the work of his old age, it having 
been produced in his seventy-third year. Bishop Waterland 
attacked Tindal in reply. A protracted controversy followed. 
That the Bishop showed himself far inferior to the Deist has 
been generally admitted. The well-known Dr. Conyers Middle- 
ton was drawn into this spirited dispute. He appeared in 
behalf of Tindal. 

In one of his letters to the Bishop is found the following 
sentence: “ If religion consists in depreciating moral virtues 
and depressing natural reason; if the duty of it be to hate and 
persecute for a different way of thinking where the best and 
wisest have never agreed — then, I declare myself an Infidel*, 
and to have no share in that religion.” 


MATTHEW TINDAL. 


415 


In addition to his works of a theological character, Tindal 
was the author of a number of valuable political essays. He 
was not a brilliant writer, but his works were carefully and 
skilfully executed. 

The number of “refutations,” and “confutations,” and 
“answers,” these works provoked from bishops and learned 
doctors, attest their learning and ability. The Bishop of Lon¬ 
don published two pastoral letters against them; Thomas 
Burnet made an attack upon them; Dr. Stebbings, Mr. Law, 
and some fourteen others entered the lists against them. His. 
“Christianity as Old as Creation,” is a work which Infidels 
may yet read with great advantage, as it is a repertory of 
authorities no longer accessible to the readers of this generation. 

Tindal was an author of whom every lover of reason may be 
proud. And after all the assaults made upon the great work 
of his, last mentioned, it has continued to maintain its ground, 
and the truths therein vindicated have continued to spread and 
take deep root. The character of this book may be inferred 
from the following extract concerning the obscurity of revela¬ 
tion : 

“ Had God, from time to time, spoken to all mankind in 
their several languages, and his words had miraculously con¬ 
veyed the same ideas to all persons; yet he could not speak 
more plainly than he has done by the things themselves, and 
the relation which reason shows there is between them. Nay, 
since it is impossible in any book, or books, that a particular 
rule could be given for every case, we must even then have 
had recourse to the light of nature to teach us our duty in most 
cases; especially considering the numberless circumstances 
which attend us, and which, perpetually varying, make the 
same actions, according as men are differently affected by them, 
either good or bad. And I may add, that most of the particu¬ 
lar rules laid down in the gospel for our direction, are spoken 
after such figurative a manner, that except we judge of their 
meaning, not merely the letter, but by what the law of nature 
antecedently declares to be our duty, they are apt to lead us 
wrong. And if precepts relating to morality are delivered after 
an obscure manner, when they might have been delivered other¬ 
wise : what reason can you assign for its being so, but that 


416 


MATTHEW TINDAL. 


infinite wisdom meant to refer us to that law for the explaining 
of them? A celebrated wit (Dean Swift) said, ‘The truly illu¬ 
minated books are the darkest.’ This writer (Swift) supposes it 
impossible, that God’s will should be revealed by books; 
‘except,’ says he, ‘it might be s. id perhaps without a figure, 
that even the world itself could not contain the books wrhich 
.should be written.’ But with submission to this reverend per¬ 
son, I cannot help thinking, but that God’s will is so clearly 
.and fully manifested in the Book of Nature, that he who runs 
may read it.” 

The following striking passage from Lord Shaftesbury, as 
■quoted by Tindal, is well worthy insertion in this place. He 
thus vindicates the integrity of the Law of Nature over the 
Scriptures: “Had the heathen distinguished themselves by 
creeds made out of spite to one another, and mutually perse- 
cu ed each other about the worship of their gods, they would 
soon have made the number of their votaries as few as the 
gods they worshiped; but we don’t find (except in Egypt, that 
mother-land of superstition), that they ever quarreled about 
their gods; though their gods sometimes quarreled, and fought 
about their votaries. By the universal liberty that was allowed 
by the ancients, matters (as a noble author observes) was so 
balanced, that reason had fair play; learning and science 
flourished; wonderful was the harmony and temper which 
arose from these contrarieties. Thus superstition and enthu¬ 
siasm were mildly treated; and being let alone, they never 
raged to that degree as to occasion bloodshed, wars, persecu¬ 
tions, and devastations; but a new sort of policy has made us 
leap the bounds of natural humanity, and out of a supernatu¬ 
ral charity, has taught us the way of plaguing one another 
most devoutly.” 

Tindal died at his house in Coldbath Fields, of the stone, 
1773, aged seventy-seven. He lived a life above reproach, and 
placidly as a weary child sank into the firms of his mother 
Nature. Every Infidel who entertains the idea of a future life 
should feel like invoking his blessing upon our cause to day. 
The time is rapidly dawning when our only gods will be works 
of 'genius, and our only prayer the grateful remembrance of 
our illustrious leaders who have gone before us. 


JOHN TOLAND. 


417 


JOHN TOLAND. 

The subject of this sketch was born Nov. 30th, 1670, at Lon¬ 
donderry, in Ireland. Some writers allege that he was the natu¬ 
ral son of a Catholic priest; others contend that he was born 
of a family once affluent, but who were at the time of his birth 
in very reduced circumstances. But however this may be, 
young Toland received a thorough education. At Glasgow Col¬ 
lege he mastered the classics, and upon leaving Glasgow, the 
magistrates of the city presented him with letters highly flat¬ 
tering to him as a man and a scholar. 

Toland was a voluminous writer. His first publication was 
•a “ Life of John Milton, containing besides the History of his 
Works, several extraordinary characters of Men and Books, 
Sects, Parties, and Opinions.” Although this work was severely 
denounced, it was speedily followed by “Amynter,” or a defense 
of Milton’s life, containing, i. A general apology for all writings 
of that kind. n. A catalogue of books, attributed in the primi¬ 
tive times to Jesus Christ, his apostles, and other eminent per¬ 
sons, with important observations relating to the canon of 
Scripture, iii. A complete history of the book, entitled '‘Icon 
Basilike, proving Dr. Gauden, and not King Charles I., to be 
the author of it,” etc. 

These books established Toland’s reputation as a writer, and 
they also subjected him to an unrelenting persecution which 
hunted him to his grave. From the preface to the works of 
Harrington, which he published from the original MSS. in 1699, 
it appears that at the outset of his career he posessed consider¬ 
able worldly wealth and held a high social position. In 1700 he 
published “Anglia Libera,” which concludes with the following 
apothegm, in which he assures the people “that no king can 
ever be so good as one of their own making, as there is no 
title equal to their approbation, which is the only divine right 
of all magistracy, for the voice of the people is the voice of 
G-od.” 




418 


JOHN TOLAND. 


In 1702 Toland spent some time in Germany, publishing a 
series of letters to a friend in Holland. About this time he 
also issued “The Art of Governing by Parties,” a favorite sub¬ 
ject of the old Freethinkers. In 1707 he put out a large treatise, 
entitled “ A Philippic Oration, to incite the English against 
the French.” The first of his theological works was “Chris¬ 
tianity not Mysterious,” in which he shows that none of the 
Christian doctrines can be properly called a mystery. 

This work was attacked with the usual Christian virulence. 
The favors of the Church were assured to those who would 
attack Toland with the greatest vehemence. A man named 
Peter Brown was made a bishop because of his disgusting 
treatment of him; and all the Anglican clergy who mani¬ 
fested their opposition were duly rewarded by honors and pre¬ 
ferment. He was held to be a new Heresiarch. One of his 
opponents, stigmatized him as seeking to be as great an impostor 
as Mohammed, and more powerful than the pope. The Puritans 
denounced him as a disguised Jesuit, and the Papists rated him 
as a rancorous Nonconformist. The Irish Parliament condemned 
his book to be publicly burnt, while the clergy loudly claimed 
that the author should be burnt with it. The book was finally 
burnt on his own threshhold, so that when the writer appeared 
he would have to step over the ashes of his own book. Indeed, 
he narrowly escaped violence from an ignorant and infuriated 
Christian populace. But by the few learned and Liberal men 
of the day John Toland was held in the highest esteem. 

Molyneux in a letter to John Locke writes: “In my last to 
you, there was a passage relating to the author of “Christian¬ 
ity not Mysterious.” I did not then think he was so near me 
as within the bounds of this city. I propose a great deal of 
satisfaction in his conversation. I take him to be a candid 
Freethinker, and a great scholar. But there is a violent sort of 
spirit which reigns here, which begins already to show itself 
against him, and I believe will increase daily, for I find the 
clergy alarmed to a mighty degree against him. And last Sun¬ 
day he had his welcome to this city, by hearing himself ha¬ 
rangued against out of the pulpit, by a prelate of this country.” 

Locke, in reply say^: “I desire you to be kind to him 
(Toland); but I must leave it to your prudence in what way 


JOHN TOLAND. 


419 


and how far. For it will be his fault alone if he proves not a 
very valuable man, and have not you for his friend.” 

In another letter to Locke, Molyneux relates as follows: 
“Mr. Toland is at length driven out of our kingdom, the poor 
gentleman at last wanted a meal’s meat, and the universal out¬ 
cry of the clergy ran so strong against him, that none durst 
admit him to their tables. The little stock of money which he 
had was soon exhausted, and to complete his hardships, the 
Parliament fell on his book, voted it to be burnt by the com¬ 
mon hangman, and ordered the author to be taken into custody 
by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and to be prosecuted by the Attorney 
General. Hereupon he is fled out of this kingdom, and none 
here knows where he has directed his course.” 

Toland found refuge for two years in Germany from the 
religious vengeance of his native country. Hearing that the 
House of Commons was about to denounce his works as hereti¬ 
cal, he hastened back to England, and with true infidel audacity 
published two letters to be laid before the Convocation. He in¬ 
sisted that he should be heard in his own defense; but as usual 
this wish was denied. 

His next production was the “Letters to Serena.” These 
were written in his characteristic, bold, unflinching manner. In 
the first on “ The Origin and Force of Prejudice,” he traces 
the progress of superstition from the hands of a midwife to 
those of a priest, and shows how the nurse, parent, profes¬ 
sor, philosopher, and politician, all. combine to warp the mind 
of man by fallacies from his progress in childhood, at school, 
at college, and in the world — how the child is blinded with an 
idea, and the man with a word. 

Among the subjects of the other letters of this interesting 
series may be mentioned, “A History of the Soul’s Immortality 
among the Heathens,” “The Origin of Idolatry,” Spinoza’s 
System of Philosophy,” etc., each being a perfect treasure of 
ideas and valuable information. Boom cannot be given in this 
brief sketch for even the merest mention of his long catalogue 
of books. A large number were never published. Only parts of 
several others ever appeared. Some were suppressed. 

No other man of his time aroused such opposition, or was 
denounced with such violence. His abilities were of a singular 


420 


JOHN TOLAND. 


and superior order, and he was much esteemed by the few men 
of genius and learning cotemporary with him. 

He was one of the most fearless advocates of Freethought in 
the age in which he lived. In his numerous works he endea¬ 
vors to impress upon the mind of the reader that all the super¬ 
stitions in the world differed but in degree — that religion was 
but the organic cause of sup rstiiion, and that all the argu¬ 
ments for it were merely made to propitiate the ignorant mul¬ 
titude. The style of his writings is unrivalled in the school of 
Freethought. Only the following extract from his “ Letter 
on Spinoza’s System ” can be here presented: 

“No parts of matter are bound to any one figure or form, 
losing and changing their figures and forms continually, that 
is, being in perpetual motion, dipt, or worn, or ground to 
pieces, or dissolved by other parts, acquiring their figures, and 
these theirs, and so on incessantly; earth, air y fire, and water, 
iron, wood, and marble, plants and animals, being rarefied, 
condensed, liquified, congealed, dissolved, coagulated, or any 
other way resolved into one another. The whole face of the 
earth exhibits these mutations every moment to our eyes, noth¬ 
ing continuing one hour numerically the same; and these 
changes being but several kinds of motion, are therefore the 
incontestable effects of universal action. But the changes in 
the parts make no change in the Universe; for it is manifest 
that the continual alterations, successions, revolutions, and 
transmutations of matter, cause no accession or diminution 
therein, no more than any letter is added or lost in the alpha¬ 
bet by the endless combinations and transpositions thereof into 
so many different words and languages; for a thing no sooner 
quits one form than it puts on another, leaving as it were the 
theater in a certain dress, and appearing again in a new one, 
which produces a perpetual youthfulness and vigor, without 
any decay or decrepitness of the world, as some have falsely 
imagined, contrary to reason and experience. But the species 
still continue by propagation, notwithstanding the decay of the 
individuals, and the death of our bodies is but matter going to 
be dressed in some new form; the impressions may vary, but 
the wax continues still the same, and indeed death is in effect 
the very same thing with our birth; for as to die is only to 


JOHN TOLAND. 


421 


cease to be what we formerly were, so to be born is to begin 
to be something which we were not before. Considering the 
numberless successive generations that have inhabited this 
globe, returning at death into the common mass of the same, 
mixing with all the other parts thereof, and to this, the inces¬ 
sant river-like flowing and transpiration of matter every moment 
from the bodies of men while they live, as well as their daily 
nourishment, inspiration of air, and other additions of matter 
to their bulk; it seems probable that there is no particle of 
matter on the whole earth which has not been a part of man. 
Nor is this reasoning confined to our own species, but remains 
as true of every order of animals and plants, or any other 
beings, since they have been all resolved into one another by 
ceaseless revolutions, so that nothing is more certain than that\ 
every material Thing is all Things, and that all Things are but 
manifestations of one.” 

The works of Toland would stock a library —his life would 
fill a volume. He inaugurated the Augustan age of Freethought. 
His books, strewn with classical illustrations, were given to 
scholars, and they have revolutionized public opinion in Eng¬ 
land. No British writer has performed greater services for the 
propagation of liberal ideas than John Toland. He was one 
of the most honest, brave, truthful, and scholastic of the old 
Deists. He was a sterling Infidel, who hazarded the highest 
powers of the Church for the duty of publishing unpopular 
opinions; and it is our duty to enshrine him as one of the 
truest advocates of that liberty of thought and speech, which 
has won for us of this later generation a freedom we cherish 
and protect. He lived like a man, and like an Infidel he peace¬ 
fully and tranquilly died in 1772. 


422 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


Thebe is but little opportunity of knowing who and what 
Anthony Collins was save what is gleaned from the scattered 
notices of contemporaries; but these are amply sufficient to 
prove him one of the best of men, and the very Corypheus of 
Deism in the seventeenth century. One author says he was 
born June 21st, 1676, of a rich and noble family, at Heston, in 
Middlesex, England, and was appointed treasurer of the county; 
but another writer names Hounslow as the place of his birth. 

He received a liberal education at Eaton and Cambridge. 
He studied awhile for the bar, but being wealthy, he was 
enabled to renounce jurisprudence. His early studies fitted 
him admirably for his subsequent duties as a magistrate. Col¬ 
lins’ first publication was a tract, “ Several of the London Cases 
Considered,” issued in the year 1700. In 1707 he published an 
“Essay Concerning the Use of Reason on Propositions, the 
Evidence whereof Depends upon Human Testimony.” This 
work treats principally of the Trinitarian controversy then 
raging, and therefore is of little value now. At this time he 
engaged in the controversy carried on with the celebrated Dr. 
Samuel Clarke. This is alluded to by one of Clarke’s biogra¬ 
phers as follows: 

“ Dr. Clarke’s arguments in favor of the immateriality, and 
consequent immortality of the soul, called out, however, a far 
more formidable antagonist than Dodwell, in the person of 
Anthony Collins, an English gentleman of singular intellectual 
acuteness, but, unhappily, of Infidel principles. The contro¬ 
versy was continued through several short treatises. On the 
whole, though Clarke, in some instances, laid himself open to 
the keen and searching dialectics of his gifted antogonist, the 
victory certainly remained with the divine.” This honest 
opinion of an opponent is the best proof of Collins’ ability and 
character. 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


423 


His “Discourses on Freethinking ” made a greater sensa¬ 
tion in the religious world than any book published against 
Christianity, with the exception of the “Age of Beason.” This 
work is among the ablest in defense of freedom of thought 
and expression that was ever issued from the press. In the 
first section, he maintains that Freethinkers have more under¬ 
standing, and that they must necessarily be the most virtuous 
people. In the second section he holds, as a fact, that Free¬ 
thinkers have been the most understanding and virtuous people 
of all ages. He follows these propositions with a carefully 
classified catalogue of Liberal thinkers, none of whom we have 
reason to be ashamed of. The ablest Christian scholars of 
England were brought forward to crush Collins. A French 
edition of the “ Discourse ” was translated under the personal 
inspection of Collins. The elder D’Israeli writes: 

“Anthony Collins wrote several well-known works, without 
prefixing his name; but having pushed too far his curious and 
polemical points, he incurred the odium of a Freethinker — a 
term which then began to be in vogue, and which the French 
adopted by translating it, in their way—‘a strong thinker.* 
Whatever tendency to ‘ liberalize ’ the mind from the dogmas 
and creeds prevails in the works of Collins, his talents and 
learning were of the first class. His morals were immaculate, 
and his personal character independent; but the odium theology 
icum of those days combined every means to stab in the dark, 
till the taste became hereditary with some. I may mention a 
fact of this cruel bigotry which occurred within my own obser¬ 
vation, on one of the most polished men of the age. The late 
Mr. Cumberland, in the work entitled his ‘ Life,’ gave this 
extraordinary fact. He said that Dr. Bentley, who so ably 
replied to Collins’ ‘Discourse,’ when many years after he dis¬ 
covered him fallen into great distress, conceiving that by hav¬ 
ing ruined Collins’ character as a writer forever, he had been 
the occasion of his personal misery, he liberally contributed to 
his maintenance. In vain I mentioned to that elegant wri er, 
who was not curious about facts, that this person could never 
have been Anthony Collins, who had always a plentiful fortune; 
and when it was suggested to him that this ‘ A. Collins ’ as he 
printed it, must have been Arthur Collins, the historic compiler, 


424 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


who was often in pecuniary difficulties, still he persisted in 
sending the lie down to posterity, without alteration, in his 
second edition, observing to a friend of mine, that ‘the story, 
while it told well, might serve as a striking instance of his 
great relative’s generosity; and that it should stand because it 
could do no harm to any but to Anthony Collins, whom lie 
considered as little short of an Atheist.’ ” 

His “Philosophical Inquiry into Human Liberty” appeared 
in 1715. Again Dr. Clarke appeared against him. The next 
great work of Collins was his “Discourse on the Grounds and 
Reasons of the Christian Religion.” This book took the relig¬ 
ious world by storm. It struck more dismay among divines 
than his work on Freethinking. In this book he proceeds to 
prove that Christianity is not proved by prophecy. That the 
Apostles relied on the predictions in the Old Testament, and 
their fulfillment in Jesus as the only sure proof of the truth of 
their religion; if therefore, the prophecies are not thoroughly 
literal, and fulfilled distinctly, there can be no proof in Chris¬ 
tianity. He then examines the principal prophecies, and dis¬ 
misses them as allegorical fables too vague to be of any credit. 

In less than two years no less than thirty-five books were 
published in reply to this work, written by the ablest and most 
influential theologians in England. In 1727 he published another 
large work, “The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered,” in 
which he finally vanquished the whole of his opponents. 

With the exception of Hobbes, perhaps no Infidel was so 
virulently attacked during his life as Collins. He lived at a 
time when the most trifling pamphlet against popular belief 
created a consternation among the saints. Acts of Parliament 
were finally adopted as the only efficient refutation of heretical 
logic. But Anthony Collins was rich; and, consequently, while 
Toland and others were persecuted and driven into exile, prison, 
and poverty, Collins with his profusion of wealth could oppose 
Christianity with impunity, mingle in the gaiety of the C urt, 
sit on the magisterial bench, and be the welcome guest of the 
bluest blooded aristocracy. Still later, while the plebeian Paine 
was persecuted, the patrician Gibbon was flattered, albeit both 
had committed the same offense. But the career of Collins soon 
drew to a close. He expired on the thirteenth of December,, 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


425- 


1729, aged fifty-three years. The following obituary notice 
inserted in the newspapers of the day suffices to show the 
esteem in which his character was held: 

“On Saturday last, died at his house in Harley Square, 
Anthony Collins, Esq. He was a remarkably active, upright, 
and impartial magistrate, the tender husband, the kind parent* 
the good master, and the true friend. He was a great promoter 
of literature in all its branches. He was an eminent example 
of temperance and sobriety, and one that had the true art of 
living. His worst enemies could never charge him with any 
vice or immorality.” 

The record of his life is one in which all who bear the name 
of Infidel may justly feel a pride. He had written a great 
number of works which he intended to have published after 
his death. Among these was a highly-prized collection of eight 
volumes of manuscripts, his final great effort against Chris¬ 
tianity, which were all arranged ready for publication. As a 
reward to one whom he deemed worthy of confidence, and one- 
who professed to be his disciple and friend, he bequeathed, 
them to Des Maizeaux, a popular author and editor. But the 
widow of Collins was much younger than himself, and, as it 
appears, an unprincipled woman every way unworthy of him.. 
She was closely connected with the Church of England, andi 
was in rather suspicious friendship with more than one clerical 
enemy of her late husband. She and one Tomlinson went to, 4 
Des Maizeaux, and for the consideration of quite a sum of 
money, induced him to betray the trust of his friend, and relin¬ 
quish the manuscripts. His conscience, however, not long after- 
ards accusing him of the great wrong he had done to the- 
.munory of his benefactor, he confessed his crime, and that he> 
id done “a most wicked thing. In a letter to a man who. 
ad been a mutual friend to Collins and himself, he wrote: “I 
ave forfeited what is dearer to me than my own life — honor and 
eputation. I send you the money I received, which I now look 
u on as the wages of iniquity, and I desire you to return it to 
Mrs. Collins, who, as I hope it of her justice, equity, and regard 
lor Mr. Collins’ intentions, will be pleased to cancel my paper.” 

But those eight volumes, the crowning efforts of a mind 
which in its youth had displayed uncommon brilliancy, were 


426 


ANTHONY COLLINS. 


never heard of more. What their contents were none can now 
inform us. This has been the fate of many of the best produc¬ 
tions of other Infidels. Christian zealots have succeeded in 
suppressing many of the most valuable writings which would 
have given a posthumous reputation to their authors. Five vol¬ 
umes of Toland’s works were irretrievably lost at his death. The 
works of Blount never appeared. Two volumes of Tindal’s were 
•seized and destroyed by the Bishop of London. Paine’s History 
of the French Bevolution and the third part of his Age of 
Lteason disappeared. Some of Hume’s and Gibbon’s works have 
not yet appeared. Bobert Taylor left valuable manuscripts 
which have never been recovered. There is no doubt that most 
of the manuscripts of the minor Infidels disappeared with their 
authors. 

Collins lived in an age of religious rancor. The wealth and 
position which shielded him from persecution during his life 
did not avail to save his most cherished writings after his 
death. His fearless utterances spread consternation among the 
clergy of England at a time when Puritanical Christianity was 
yet the Jehu of public opinion, and triumphantly driving its 
chariot to the farthest verge of fanaticism. But while others 
languished in poverty and prison for the propagation of unsanc¬ 
tioned sentiments, Anthony Collins, from his magisterial bench, 
or from the gaiety of the court, could laugh defiance at the 
hideous threatening fangs of bigotry. His wealth insured him 
peace while living. While Christianity has never failed to pierce 
the vitals of its poor opposers, it has seldom been wanting in 
respect to its adversaries of affluence and position. 

The literary claims of Collins have been fully established. 
His works are logically composed and explicitly worded. His 
style of writing is clear, serious, solid, and analytical. He was 
a staunch and immovable asserter of universal liberty in all 
civil and religious matters; and if posterity does him justice, 
it will place his bust in the same historic niche with Hobbes 
and Bolingbroke, and the glorious old champions who took part 
in the great Deistic struggles of the seventeenth century. 


BOLINGBROKE. 


427 


BOLINGBROKE. 


Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, was born in his family 
•seat at Battersea, Surrey County, England, on the first of Octo¬ 
ber, 1672. He was educated by a clergyman at Christ’s Church, 
Oxford, and developed himself in an extraordinary manner. It 
is said that he was somewhat dissipated in his younger days. 
When he left Oxford, it is reported that he was not only one 
of the handsomest men of the day, but that his classic elo¬ 
quence, dazzling wit, and refined address made him the “first 
gentleman in Europe.” He was renowned for the fascinating 
graces of his person and his wild exploits, rather than for 
remarkable talents; but upon becoming a member of Parlia¬ 
ment at the age of twenty-four a complete change took place 
in his conduct. He soon became the hardest worker in the 
House of Commons, and his friends were greatly surprised by 
the ready eloquence and aptitude for business of the once wild 
St. John. Night after night he spoke with the vivacity of a 
poet and the profundity of a veteran statesman on public 
^affairs, and awakened the expectations of a nation. 

In 1704 he received the seals as Secretary of War, and by 
his discretion and activity was mainly instrumental in gaining 
those glorious victories of Marlborough. When the Whigs 
came into power he resigned his office and retired into privacy; 
but two years after, when the administration was changed, he 
re-appeared as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. 

The greatest work of his public career was the negotiation 
of the celebrated treaty of Utrecht, which was signed by him. 
At that time he was British Plenipotentiary to Paris, where he 
was hailed as a guardian angel. He was greeted with acclama¬ 
tion by the populace in the streets, and when he went to the 
theaters every one rose to welcome him. 

He was created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712, and on the 
twenty-seventh of July, 1714, he became Premier of England. 
But 1 is triumph was of short duration. A stormy debate in the 


428 


BOLINGBROKE, 


Privy Council had hastened the death of Queen Anne, who' 
expired the first of August, 1714. The Whigs were again victo¬ 
rious, and Bolingbroke was again deprived of power. He was 
known to have entertained pains for the restoration of the 
Stuart dynasty; and aware that he would fall a sacrifice to 
party revenge, and that his accusers would also be his judges, he 
wisely withdrew to France. He was impeached for high treason 
in 1715, and failing to appear, was attainted by Parliament. 

While in France he lived at the mimic court of the exiled 
Stuarts, at Avignon. The Pretender had appointed him his 
prime minister. In 1720 he married a niece of Madam de Main- 
tenon. For several years he occupied himself with philosoph¬ 
ical pursuits. In 1723 he received a pardon, which allowed him 
to return to England, but his sequestered estates were not 
returned, and it is said that this apology for a pardon waa 
negotiated by a bribe of eleven thousand pounds to the German 
Dutchess of Kendal — one of the king’s mistresses. 

During his exile he corresponded with his old friends, Pope* 
and Swift. At this time Pope had won the applause of England, 
aad was considered the arbiter of genius, as Voltaire was in 
France. Both of these men saw in the brilliant British peer a 
master, and they ranked by his side as the twin apostles of 
Freethought. Some one has said, “ In his society these two 
illustrious men felt and acknowledged a superior genius; and 
if he had no claim to excellence in poetry —the art in which 
they were so preeminent — he surpassed them both in the phi¬ 
losophy they so much admired.” 

For ten years Bolingbroke devoted himself to various polit¬ 
ical writings. Among these are a “Dissertation on Parties,” 
“Remarks on the History of England,” and “The Idea of a 
Patriot King.” These works were in a very popular and brill¬ 
iant style. They were condemned by his enemies as factious 
and irreligious in the highest degree. 

Alexander Pope had won the applause of England by his 
poems. For many years he had been Bolingbroke’s constant 
correspondent. He had laid the copy of his greatest epic at the 
feet of the illustrious lord, and begged of him to correct its 
errors. Bolingbroke’s principal friends were Pope and Swift. 
These three friends were united in the closest confidence, and 


BOLINGBROKE 


m 


■were of the same sentiment in religion as well as politics. 
Although Pope had been educated a Catholic, and, for the sake 
of peace occasionally conformed to its rites, and Swift was a 
dignitary of the English Church, yet these three distinguished 
characters, celebrated for different accomplishments, constituted 
at this period a trinity of Deists which has enshrined their 
names forever in the glorious history of Freethought. The 
widow of Mallet, the poet, a lady of remarkable talent and 
learning, and who lived upon terms of intimate friendship with 
Bolingbroke, Swift, and Pope, frequently declared that the three 
were all equally Deistical and of the same religious sentiments. 
Indeed the Earl of Nottingham, in the great debate upon the 
Dissenter’s Bill, alluded to Swift “as a man in a fair way for 
becoming a bishop who was hardly suspected of being a Chris¬ 
tian.” Pope, the greatest poet of the age —Swift, the poli ical 
'Churchman, and author of “Gulliver’s Travels’’ — Bolingbroke, 
the most accomplished statesman of his country, formed, indee'd, 
a brilliant coterie of Infidels. They all agreed to promulgate 
a code of ethics which should embody the positive speculations 
and elaborate philosophical researches of Bolingbroke, the easy 
grace of Swift, and the sweet and polished rhyme of Pope. 

For this purpose the “Essay on Man,” was designed on the 
principles elaborated by Bolingbroke in his private le;ters to 
Pope, an edition of which was afterwards published by Mallet 
in five volumes. It wrs Bolingbroke who drew up the scheme, 
mapped out the arguments, and sketched the similies —it was 
Pope who embellishe 1 its beauties, and turned it into rhyme. 
Lord Bathurst told Dr. Warton that he had read the whol of 
the “Essay on Man” in the handwriting of Bodngbroke, and 
drawn up in a series of propositions which Pope was to am li.y, 
versify, and illustrate. This poem —the grand epic of Deism — 
is the creed of Bolingbroke, poetized by Pope. 

Some writer lias observed of the “Essay on Man”: “It 
stands alone in its impregnability— a pile of literatu e ike ne 
“Novum Organum” of Bacon, the “Principia” of Newton, or 
the Essay of Locke. The facades of its noble colonnades are 
seen extending their wings through the whole sweep of history, 
•constituting a pantheon of morals, where every nation sends its 
devotees to admire and worship.” 


430 


BOLINGBRO KE. 


Bolingbroke’s ideas of a future life, as well as his style of 
writing, may be inferred from the following brief quotations 
extracted from Yol. IY. of his works; “ I do not say, that to 
believe in a future state is to believe in a vulgar error; but 
this I say, it cannot be demonstrated by reason; it is not in 
the nature of it capable of demonstration, and no one ever 
returned that irremedial way to give us an assurance of the 
fact.” 

•‘He alone is happy, and he is truly so, who can say, wel¬ 
come life whatever it brings! welcome death whatever it is. 
That you or I should return to the earth from whence we 
came, to the dirt under our feet, or be mingled with the ashes- 
of those herbs and plants from which we drew nutrition whilst 
we lived, does not seem any indignity offered to our nature, 
since it is common to all the animal kind; and he who com¬ 
plains of it as such, does not seem to have been set, by his 
reasoning faculties, so far above them in life, as to deserve not 
to be levelled with them at death. We were like them before- 
our birth; that is, nothing. So we shall be, on this hypothesis, 
like them too after our death; that is, nothing. What hardship 
is done us ? Unless it be a hardship, that we are not immortal 
because we wish to be so, and flatter ourselves with that expec¬ 
tation.” 

Bolingbroke died in 1751, after a long and painful illness, 
occasioned by the ignorance of a quack. While lying on his 
death-bed he composed a discourse, entitled “Considerations on 
the State of the Nation.” Sustained by the truth of the princi¬ 
ples he had advocated, he met death w T ith that tranquil trust 
and calm serenity of mind which none but the honest Free¬ 
thinker has ever fully experienced. He was buried in the 
church at Battersea. He was a brave, sincere man, a man of 
the highest rank of genius, a man of truth and learning and 
principle, and one of the most powerful Freethinkers* ot hie age I 


BERKELEY. 


431 


BERKELEY. 


This celebrated metaphysician was born at Kilcrin, Ireland* 
on the 12th of March, 1681. He was first educated at Kilkenny* 
and next at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was chosen 
Fellow in 1707. The same year he published “Arithmetic Dem¬ 
onstrated without Algebra or Euclid.” In 1709 he published his 
“Theory of Vision,” which was the first attempt that ever was 
made to distinguish the immediate and natural objects of sight 
from the conclusions we have been accustomed from infancy to* 
draw from them. In 1710 he published a remarkable work, 
“The Principles of Human Knowledge,” and in 1713 the “Dia¬ 
logues between Hylas and Philonous,” the object of both being 
to dispute the common notion of the existence of matter , and 
to establish the hypothesis that there is no proof of its exist¬ 
ence anywhere but in our own perceptions. But let it never be 
forgotten that, contrary to the usually received opinion, he 
adhered to the reports of the senses , and “discarded merely the 
addendum of reasoners — matter.” However singular his opin¬ 
ions might have appeared, there was so much beauty in his 
writings that the greatest men —amongst others, Steele and 
Swift — courted his friendship. He wrote several papers for 
Steele in the “ Guardian,” and through him became intimate 
with Pope. Swift recommended him to the Earl of Peterbor¬ 
ough, who took him abroad as his chaplain. In 1721 he became 
chaplain to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, took his degree of 
D.D., and about this time had a fortune bequeathed to him by 
a lady of Dublin, Mrs. Vanhomrigh (Swift’s “Vanessa”). He 
was appointed Dean of Derry in 1724, before which he had 
been chaplain to the Duke of Grafton. In 1725 he printed a 
“Proposal for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity,” 
and wished to found a college in the Bermudas for that pur¬ 
pose, for which he raised a large sum of money by subscrip¬ 
tions. He also received a grant or promise of £20,000 from gov¬ 
ernment, and having married a Miss Anna Forster, sailed to 


432 


BEKKELEY. 


Khode Island in 1728. On this subject he wrote a short poem, 
•ending with these well-known and oft-quoted lines: 

“Westward the course of empire takes its way; 

The four first acts already past, 

A fifth shall close the drama with the day:— 

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.” 

He reached America, and resided and preached in Newport 
lor about two years; but the scheme failed, owing to the min¬ 
istry failing to supply the funds, having actually applied them 
to other purposes. He therefore had to return to England. He 
was chosen Bishop of Cloyne in 1734; and about 1745, in order 
to set a shining example to the avaricious and corrupt clergy of 
the day, he refused the Bishopric of Clogher, the revenue of 
which was twice as large as that of Cloyne. He removed to 
Oxford in 1752, and died there in January, 1753. 

Besides his purely philosophical works, Berkeley wrote sev¬ 
eral volumes on mathematics; a series of “Queries,” occasioned 
by the licentiousness of the times; ‘‘A Word to the Wise”; and 
a book—famous in its day — on the virtues of tar-water. 

Dr. Johnson saidBerkeley was a profound scholar as 
well as a man of fine imagination.' And Bishop Atterbury 
testified as follows, — “So much understanding, so much inno¬ 
cence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion 
of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.” And this uni¬ 
versal love and admiration of the good Bishop of Cloyne contin¬ 
ued until his death. It has even been said that “ he, of all 
mankind , died possessed of 

‘ • That which should accompany old age, 

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.’” 

And his memory is still green; and “though dead, he yet 
speaketh *' to hosts of admiring students. 

“ Berkeley is always accused of having propounded a theory 
which contradicts the evidences of the senses. That a man who 
thus disregards the senses must be out of his own, was a ready 
answer; ridicule was not slow in retort; declamation gave i;self 
elbow-room, and exhibited itself in a triumphant attitude.” 


BERKELEY. 


But “unfortunately for the critics, Berkeley did not contradict 
the evidence of the senses; did not propound a theory at vari¬ 
ance in this point with the ordinary belief of mankind. His 
peculiarity is, that he confined himself exclusively to the evi¬ 
dence of the senses. What the senses informed him of, that, 
and that only, would he accept. He held fast to the facts of 
consciousness; he placed himself resolutely in the centre of the 
instinctive belief of mankind: there he took his stand, leaving 
to philosophers the region of supposition, inference, and of 
•occult substances.” He sided with Common Sense, and with 
the common people, “ who recognize no distinction between the 
reality and the appearance of objects, and, repudiating the 
baseless hypothesis of a world existing unknown and unper- 
•ceived, he resolutely maintained that what are called the sen¬ 
sible shows of things are in truth the very things themselves.” 
He may not have been always sufficiently guarded against all 
ambiguity; but being an earnest thinker, and a patient truth- 
seeker, he seems to have endeavored on several occasions to 
guard himself against misapprehension, as for instance, in the 
following passages: — “I do not argue against the existence of 
any one thing that we can apprehend either by sensation or 
reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my 
hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The 
•only thing whose existence I deny is that which philosophers call 
Matter , or corporeal substance. . . . Assert the evidence of 
sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same. That 
what I see, hear, and feel, doth exist, i. e., is perceived by me, 
I no more doubt than I do of my own being; but I do not see 
how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof of anything 
which is not perceived by sense.” 

In fine, Berkeley stood firm on the rock of Common Sense. 
He scouted the idea that human knowledge is the measure of 
all things. lie sensed phenomena, and believed in them; but 
he knew nothing about noumena. The apparent tree and table 
he perceived and believed in; the so-called “essential,” “sub¬ 
stantial,” “ invisible ” tree and table he entirely ignored. 
Matter, as a metaphysical entity, was to him mere chimera. 
His very starting-point was what the plain dictates of his senses, 
and the senses of all men, furnished. 


434 


BERKELEY. 


All the world has heard of his Idealism; and though innu¬ 
merable “coxcombs” have vanquished it “with a grin,” it still 
lives. And no wonder that it should have been pronounced, 
irrefutable, at least by any method of metaphysical reasoning. 
Having battered down almost every objection, trivial, or serious, 
that could be offered, Idealism iterates its fundamental princi¬ 
ple:— “All our knowledge of objects is a knowledge of ideas;- 
objects and ideas are the same. Ergo , nothing exists but what, 
is perceived.” “Berkeley taught that there was but One,” but 
unlike Spinoza, who taught that that One was Substance, or 
Matter, Berkeley taught that It was Thought. Now, no matter 
what we call this One , the result —speculative or practical —is 
the same. We may have certain degrading associations, attached, 
to the idea of Substance, or certain exalted associations attached 
to that of Thought. It matters not. Our associations can make- 
no difference whatsoever with respect to the real nature of 
things. 

To conclude:—Idealism, after all, explains nothing. To accept 
it would be to accept a mere hypothesis, at the cost of renounc¬ 
ing a strong belief, now fast growing into scientific importance, 
namely, that there exists an external world quite independent of 
any perception, or in other \yords, an external matter unlike our 
sensations, but of which we can predicate nothing , as its attri¬ 
butes are entirely unknown to us. Our constant tendency, 
however,by the processes of an inverse Materialism or a per¬ 
verse Spiritualism, is to endow this with human attributes of 
Power, Wisdom, and Goodness on the one hand, or of Caprice, 
Folly, and Evil on the other, just as if we — Optimists or 
Pessimists as we may be — knew anything about it! Berkeley 
“failed, as the greatest Philosophers have failed, not because- 
he was weak, but because Philosophy was impossible. . . 
One great result of his labors was the lesson he taught of 
the vanity of ontological speculations. He paved the way to 
that skepticism which, gulf-like, yawns as the terminal road of 
all consistent metaphysics.” 


VOLTAIRE. 


435 


VOLTAIRE. 

Francis Marie Arouet De Voltaire was born at Chatenay, 
near Paris, on the twentieth of February, 1694. Owing to 
excessive feebleness, his baptism was delayed till the twenty- 
second of November of the same year. Indeed, he suffered 
greatly from ill-health and a weakly constitution throughout 
his whole life. His father possessing the advantages of an 
ample fortune was enabled to provide his son with a superior 
education. Conformably to the custom of the age among French 
families of rank, the subject of our sketch assumed the name of 
Voltaire, leaving to his elder brother the name of the family. At 
the age of twelve he was admitted to the college of Jesuits, the 
professors of which were not long in discovering the germs of 
the lad’s genius and skeptical intellect. Father Jay, one of his 
instructors, prophetically pointed him out as the apostle of 
Deism in France. 

At an e;irly age his satirical and poetical proclivities were 
particularly marked, and he obtained considerable notoriety for 
his Infidel epigrams. Even while a schoolboy he was charac¬ 
terized by that independence of mind and remarkable genius 
for which he was afterwards distinguished. Soon after leaving 
college he was introduced into the choicest society of Paris, 
where he made the acquaintance of the most celebrated men of 
that time. Nobles and princes, literary celebrities, and ladies 
of rank and fashion and fortune, were in Lis circle of acquaint¬ 
ance. The father, a staid, respectable notary, wishing to make 
his son a lawyer, grew anxious and alarmed on hearing of his 
predilection for tragedies and poetry, and his gay career at 
Paris, and insisted upon his binding himself to an attorney. A 
quarrel ensued, and the young Voltaire was forbidden his fath¬ 
er’s house, and exiled to Holland. 

But after a brief absence, he again returned to Paris. His 
father now determined that he should be bound to an attorney, 
and insisted peremptorily upon his renouncing poetry and 


436 


YOLTAIKE. 


living at large. He was placed in the house of an attorney, 
but fortunately for the world of letters, the poetical tendencies 
and literary aspirations of the bold, imaginative, and vivacious 
Voltaire proved too strong to yield to the practical prudence 
and worldly respectability of the resolute old notary. The son 
of Apollo, however, did not long lead the life of a plodding 
attorney. An intimate and influential friend of the father felt 
the restraint under which the youth labored in his uncongenial 
situation, and finally obtained permission to take him to his 
secluded country estate until he would be better prepared to 
choose a profession. While there Louis XIV. died, — in the 
autumn of 1715. The people generally hailed the event with 
indecent joy. The same people who had been profuse in their 
panegyrics of the “grand monarch during his life, were prodi¬ 
gal of lampoons to his memory after his decease. Among the 
printed insults to the dead king was a pungent poem, the satir¬ 
ical lines of which set forth the sufferings resulting from the 
united tyranny of kings and priests—unrighteous and harass¬ 
ing edicts, burdensome taxes, and crowded prisons. The last 
line read: “These evils I’ve seen, and I’m scarcely one score,” 
and though Voltaire was then upwards of three and twenty, he 
was accused of being the author, and was accordingly thrown 
into the Bastile. 

While in prison he sketched his famous “ League,” com¬ 
pleted his “Edipus,” and wrote his merry verses on the misfor¬ 
tune of being a prisoner. His incarceration, however, was 
brief; for the profligate Begent, D’ Orleans, who now reigned, 
becoming assured of his innocence, not only procured his liber¬ 
ation, but presented him with a purse of money. “I thank 
your royal highness,” said Voltaire, “for having provided me 
with food, but I hope that you will not hereaiter trouble your¬ 
self concerning my lodgings.” He assiduously devoted th • next 
six years of his life to the composition of his many and vol¬ 
uminous works, which consisted of plays, history, poetry, and 
philosophy. His numerous dramatic pieces are considered by 
competent critr s second only to Shakespeare’s. 

He now gave himself up to study and reflection. The frivo¬ 
lous pleasures of the gay and fashionable society of Paris no 
longer had attractions for him, the recklessness of youth had 


Y 0 L T AI R E 


437 


subsided into the courage of a noble manhood, and he came to 
love a tranquil country life Said he, “ I was born to be a 
fawn or creature of the woods. I am not made to live in a 
town. I fancy myself in hell when I am in the accursed city 
of Paris.” 

His father, who had not yet relinquished the hope of seeing 
his son a successful advocate, was induced to go and see one of 
his new tragedies performed; he was melted to tears; and 
amidst the applause and the fe icitatio s of the ladies of the 
court he embraced the author, and never again expressed a 
desire to have him become a judge. At one of the representa¬ 
tions of his celebrated play of Edipus, Voltaire appeared upon 
the stage in the habit of a high priest. One of the ladies of 
the French nobility petulantly inquired who that young man 
was who thus sought to disturb the performance. Upon being 
informed that it was the author, she correctly conceived that he 
was a character superior to the littleness of self-love, and 
expressed a desire of forming,his acquaintance. They met; and 
the inexperienced heart of ihe writer was inspired by such a 
tender passion as to seriously divert his mind from his studies. 
But his pressing suit was rejected, and regret and remorse at 
this disappointment lasted him for life. He proceeded with his 
plays, aud endeavored to console himself by closer application 
to literary pursuits. He was a lover of social intercourse, and 
notwithstanding his remarkable industry, was frequently found 
at the gay supper tables of his friends of rank and fortune; 
but he frequently excused himself from the most exacting invi¬ 
tations, preferring the quiet and delightfulness of solitude to 
even the country seats of noblemen, He thus wrote: “If I 
went to Fontainbleau, or Villars, or Sully, I should do no work. 
I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures and compli¬ 
ance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to be 
using for a necessary and creditable task.” Noble words were 
these for that corrupt and pleasure-loving age. They foreshad¬ 
owed the grand, unselfish life he subsequently lived. 

In 1725 he again became an inmate of the gloomy Bastile, in 
consequence of an attempt to revenge an insult inflicted upon 
him by one of the young aristocrats of the court. After a con¬ 
finement of six months he was released, and ordered to quit 


438 


VOLTAIRE. 


Paris. He sought refuge in England. This was in 1726. The 
quick and apprehensive Frenchman soon mastered the English 
language. Indeed, so surprising was the progress that he made 
that in less than a year he had not only read and criticised all 
the standard English works in poetry, philosophy, and religion, 
but even translated some of the most difficult into French 
verse. He became known to all the wits and Freethinkers of 
England. 

Already had he commenced his war against Christianity. He 
felt himself called upon to destroy every species of error and 
prejudice which enslaved the mind of man. His “Henriade,” 
was published at this period in London. Presents were made 
him by Geo. I. and the princess of AVales, who afterwards 
became queen. During his stay in England he gave to the 
world his famous tragedies of *• Brutus,” and the “Death of 
Caesar.” 

Voltaire returned to France and undertook the thankless 
task of introducing British thought upon religion, science, and 
philosophy, among his countrymen. In London he had associ¬ 
ated with the most eminent men in that, the Augustan era of 
English literature. It has been said that he left France a poet, 
and returned to it a sage. His Letters on the English, which 
he published soon after his return, proved too outspoken to the 
clergy of France. They demanded the destruction of this 
heretical production, and it was, in accordance with a decree of a 
council, publicly burnt. Voltaire himself had to flee to escape 
a similar fate. 

Through all his after life the satirical skeptic, like a hunted 
fox, had the priests on his track In the midst of his persecu¬ 
tions and literary pursuits the astute philosopher succeeded by 
adroit management and successful speculation in the public 
funds, in acquiring considerable wealth, which, though the 
result of extreme prudence in business affairs, was lavishly 
expended in assisting the suffering and needy. He spent a great 
portion of his fortune in providing for poor men of letters and 
encouraging in young men the germs of genius. He found a 
niece of the celebrated poet Cornei.le suffering the privations 
of poverty; and he gave her a home and provided for her / 
education. 


VOLTA! li E. 


439 


Voltaire has been accused of avarice. But a more silly and 
Senseless slander could not have been concocted by his Chris¬ 
tian contemporaries. The wealth derived by prudence in pecu¬ 
niary transactions was employed in munificent liberality. The 
use Voltaire made of riches might prevail on pious spleen itself 
to pardon him their acquirement. His pen and purse were ever 
at the service of the oppressed. 

An infirm old man named Calais, living at Toulouse, fell a 
Victim to Catholic intolerance. His family was ruined and 
reduced to a suffering condition. Becoming fully assured of 
the innocence of the martyred father, Voltaire resolved to 
secure justice for the family. For three years he labored unre¬ 
mittingly to this end. In all this time he says that a smile 
never escaped him for which he did not reproach himself. This 
was but one of the many occasions upon which he espoused the 
cause of the weak and the wronged against the powerful and 
persecuting. Though denounced by his envenomed Christian 
enemies as a scoffer and a skeptic, his whole life was one long 
act of benevolence. 

We next follow him to the Court of Frederick the Great. He 
was welcomed with ostentatious cordiality by the Prussian King, 
who took great pride in patronizing men of letters. Though a 
great general, Frederick was a poor poet. Yet he had the 
whimsical weakness to imagine himself a master in the great 
democracy of letters. Voltaire, though treated with the most 
distinguished consideration, soon perceived that the purpose of 
the king was to employ him merely as a literary servant to 
shape and embellish his own poor productions. But the brill¬ 
iant Frenchman swayed a realm mightier than ever conquered by 
the sword, and he scorned to barter his independence for the 
hospitality of a Court. He could be the friend of a king, but a 
menial, never. Some verses were sent him one day from 
Frederick with the request that they be returned with liis 
criticisms and corrections. “See what a quantity of his dirty 
linen the king has sent me to wash,” exclaimed the indignant 
Voltaire. The wily and witty heretic, finding that he could not 
comply with all the whimsical wishes of his royal host, returned 
the key, the cross, and the patent of pension that Frederick had 
bestowed upon him, and parted from the mighty monarch with a 


440 


YOLTAI RE. 


heart full of resentment. The great Frederick meanly vented 
his spite on his departing guest by causing his arrest at Frank¬ 
fort upon the pitiable pretense that he had purloined some of 
the royal poems. As if the great Voltaire would need to plagia¬ 
rize from the puerile poetry of the pretentious Prussian! 

The emissary who was despatched after him demanded an 
apology to deliver to the king, stating that he was instrucled 
to repeat his answer verbatim. Voltaire told him that “tho 
king might go to the devil.” Upon being asked if that was the- 
message he wished conveyed to his majesty, he answered: 
“Yes; and add to it that I told you to go to the devil with 
him.” 

Becoming wearied with his wandering and unsettled manner 
of life, he bought an estate at Ferney, where he spent the last 
twenty years of his life. Here, removed from the turmoils of 
the boisterous world and all the excitements to personal pas¬ 
sion, he led a pleasant and peaceful life, adorned by acts of 
rare and bold benevolence, devoted to the service of the suffer¬ 
ing and of the race. He here spent the serenest period of his 
life, undisturbed save by the threats of priests and the bullying 
beadles of persecution. He became known to Europe as the 
“Sage of Ferney.” He rebuilt the house, laid out the gardens,, 
and received at his table distinguished guests from every sur¬ 
rounding country. Here, amid the amenities of social inter¬ 
course, he continued to occupy himself with literary labors. 
He published a translation of Ecclesiastes and the Song of 
Solomon, and notwithstanding he pruned the licentious lan¬ 
guage and imagery of the original, the work was burnt by the 
authorities as immoral and indecent. In this transaction the 
Christians condemned their own books and burnt them as 
obscene. Voltaire followed this act by a volley of such ironical 
lampoons as none save him could pen, in which he mocked at 
the universal hypocrisy and corruption of morals in Europe, 
and the subversion of that energy and nobility of character for 
which the ancients were celebrated. 

From his retreat at Ferney he scattered his satirical sheets 
throughout the reading world, and shot his keen and rankling 
shafts into the breasts of the bigots who were endeavoring to 
darken the intellectual sky. The contentious old patriarch at 


VOLTAIRE. 


441 


Ferney, wielding a pen mightier than a sovereign’s scepter* 
flaunted fearless defiance in the faces of all the tyrants and 
hireling priests of Christendom. 

In 1778, after an absence of twenty-seven years, he re-visited 
Paris, He had just finished his play of “ Irene,” and liis anxi¬ 
ety to see it performed prompted him to visit the great gay 
capital again. A grand ovation awaited him. The public 
thronged to pay him homage. All Paris, high and low, rich 
and poor, united to pay honor to the now popular Deist- 
Courtiers and nobles and princes overwhelmed him with their 
congratulations, and even disguised themselves as waiters to be- 
in his company. His trenchant pen and fiery zeal had ani¬ 
mated the advocates of justice in the Calais case; and thanks 
to his eloquence and untiring courage he had interested power¬ 
ful friends on his side, and had finally succeeded in obtaining a 
reversal of the sentence and a compensation to the family of 
the murdered father. And of all the marks of esteem then 
being bestowed upon him, none so touched the tender heart of 
the kind old heretic as the remark of a poor woman on the 
Pont Royal, who being asked who the hero of the l our was, 
replied: “ Know you not that he is the savior of Calais?” Vol¬ 
taire was then seventy years of age. He had outlived all his* 
enemies. He who had been the object of the t^nrelenting perse¬ 
cution of priests and the corrupt courtiers for more than half 
a century, had survived to see the day when “all that was. 
most eminent in station or most distinguished in talent—all 
that most shone in society or ruled in court, seemed to bend 
before him.” He was greeted by the acclamations of the peo¬ 
ple in the streets, crowned with flowers at the theater, and fol¬ 
lowed to his home by enthusiastic thousands. There at a. 
theater he met Benjamin Franklin—for the only time. Tim 
two veterans embraced each other in the midst of public 
applause, and it was said to be Solon embracing Sophocles. 
The American philosopher presented his grandson to Voltaire* 
requesting that he would give him his benediction. God and 
Liberty,” said Voltaire; “it is the only benediction which can 
be given to the grandson of Franklin.” 

Three months after, on the 30th of May, 1778, in his eighty- 
fifth year, the Infidel patriarch passed serenely into the last 


442 


VOLTAIRE. 


great solemn sleep of man. The most extraordinary character 
of the eighteenth century had gone down to the remorseless 
tomb in the midst of his triumphs. With the exception of the 
petty perturbations to which he was subjected by the priests, 
lie had breathed his last in tranquillity and peace. In order 
that no public stigma might attach to his name by being 
refused Christian burial, the group of friends and philosophers 
gathered around his death-bed persuaded him to submit to the 
silly ceremony of confession and absolution. He consented to 
undergo the obnoxious ordeal to please his imy>ortunate friends; 
but when the Cure of St. Sulpice, who had been procured for 
that purpose, approached him with the question, “ Do you 
believe the divinity of Jesus Christ?” the dying Infidel pushed 
him petulantly aside, exclaiming: “In the name of God, sir, 
speak to me no more of that man, but let me die in peace!” 
This spoilt the scheme of his friends, and the certificate of 
burial was refused; but before the prohibition could be procured 
they had hurriedly deposited his remains in a monastery of 
which his nephew was the abbot. Ignorant and lying priests, 
in accordance with the pious practice of fabricating “horrible 
death-beds ” for unbelievers, have long edified the Christian 
world with their lugubrious delineations of the dying agonies 
and suppositive retraction of the great French Freethinker. 
And notwithstanding the most unqualified denial of Dr. Burard 
and many others who were witnesses of the death scene, there 
-are those who still credit these falsehoods. These senseless 
stories are the inventions of Christian fraud and hypocrisy. 

But fortunately the grave of the great skeptic remains sacred 
from the uncharitable touch of those interested calumniators 
who seek to draw aside the veil that should hide from the 
world’s cold stare the dying sufferings of a fellow mortal. Let 
those who base an argument for their faith upon death-bed 
scenes, read the following from Carlyle: “He who, after t e 
impurtable exit of so many Cartouches and Thurtelies, in every 
age of the world, can continue to regard the manner of a man’s 
death as a test of his religious orthodoxy, may boast himself 
impregnable to merely terrestrial logic.” 

During the first French revolution the body of Voltaire was 
removed to Paris at the request of the citizens, and buried in 


VOLTAIRE. 


443 


.the Pantheon. In his “History of the Girondists,” Lamartine 
thus describes the removal: “On the 11th of July the depart¬ 
mental and municipal authorities went in state to the barrier of 
Charenton, to receive the mortal remains of Voltaire, which were 
placed on the ancient site of the Bastile, like a conqueror on 
.his trophies; his coffin was exposed to public gaze, and a pedes¬ 
tal was formed for it of stones torn from the foundations of 
.their ancient stronghold of tyranny; and thus Voltaire, when 
dead triumphed over those stones which had triumphed over 
and confined him when living. On one of the blocks was the 
inscription: “Receive on this spot, where despotism once 
lettered thee, the honors decreed to thee by thy country.” The 
coffin of Voltaire was deposited between those of Descartes 
and Mirabeau — the spot predestined for this intermediary genius 
between philosophy and policy, between the design and the 
execution.” 

The following brief extracts will suffice to show the power 
and penetration, the grace and genius, and quiet irony of the 
.great Deistical author: 

“The ambition of domineering over the mind, is one of the 
strongest passions. A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan 
of any description, is always for conquering like a prince, and 
there are many more sects than there are sovereigns in the 
world. To whose guidance shall I submit my mind ? Must I 
be a Christian because I happened to be born in London, or in 
.Madrid? Must I be a Mussulman, bedause I was born in 

Turkey ? As it is myself alone that I ought to consult, the 

choice of a religion is my greatest interest. One man adores 
God by Mahomet, another by the Grand Lama, and another by 
the Pope. Weak and foolish men! adore God by your own 
reason.” “I conclude, that every sensible man, every honest 
man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. The great 
name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere, is the 
only name we ought to adopt. The only gospel we should read 
is the grand book of nature, written with God’s own hand and 
stamped with his own seal. The only religion we ought to 

profess is to adore God, and act like honest men. It would be 

as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce 
^vil as it would be impossible for Christian fanaticism not to 


444 


VOLTAIRE. 


produce it.” His assault on Christianity as a dogmatic system 
of religion, was the principal work of his life, and his unspar¬ 
ing onslaught on its pernicious absurdities constitutes his chief 
glory. He detested and despised it as as a pestilent tissue of‘ 
error and a most damnable superstition. He verily believed- 
that in the name of Jesus Christ more blood and tears had 
been shed than in the name cf any other man or religion that 
ever cursed mankind. He therefore devoted himself to the 
destruction of orthodox Christianity; and never for one moment 
did he waver in the prosecution of his purpose. 

The following answer to the oft-repeated question, “What, 
will you give in its place?” is in his characteristic style:. 
“What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of your 
relatives. I tell you to rid yourself of this beast, and you ask 
me what you shall put in its place! Is it you that put this, 
question to me? Then you are a hundred times m re odious 
than the Pagan Pontiffs, who permitted themselves to enjoy 
tranquillity among their ceremonies and sacrifices, who did not 
attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the, 
powers of the magistrates, and who introduced no discord, 
among mankind. You have the face to ask what you must; 
substitute in the place of your fables.” 

The calm reasoning of the following passage on Paith must, 
impress every unprejudiced reader: “Divine faith, about which 
so much has been written, is evidently nothing more than: 
incredulity brought under subjection; for we certainly have no- 
other faculty than the understanding by which we can believe; 
and the objects of faith are not those of the understanding. 
We can believe only what appears to be true; and nothing can 
appear true but in one of the three following ways: by intui¬ 
tion or feeling, as I exist, I see the sun; or by an accumulation 
of probability amounting to certainty, as there is a city called 
Cons antinople; or by positive demonstration, as triangles of 
the same base and height are equal. Faith, therefore, being 
nothing at all of this description, can no more be a belief, a 
persuasion, than it can be yellow or red. It can be nothing but 
the annihilation of reason, a silence of adoration at the con¬ 
templation of things absolutely incomprehensible. Thus, speak¬ 
ing philosophically, no person believes the Trinity; no person 


VOLTAIRE. 


445 


believes that the same body can be in a thousand places at 
■once; and he who says, I believe these mysteries, will see 
beyond the possibility of a doubt, if he reflects for a moment 
•on what passes in his mind, that these words mean no more 
than, I respect thee, mysteries. If God himself were to say to 
me, “Thought is of an olive color;” “the square of a certain 
number is bitter;” I should certainly understand nothing at 
all from these words. I could not adopt them either as true or 
false. But I will repeat them, if he commands me to do it; 
and I will make others repeat them at the risk of my life. 
This is faith; it is nothing more than obedience. 

“ In order to obtain a foundation then for this obedience, it is 
merely necessary to examine the books which require it. Our 
understanding, therefore, should investigate the books of the 
Oid and New Testament, just as it would Plutarch or Livy; and 
if it finds in them incontestable and decisive evidenc es — eviden¬ 
ces obvious to all minds, and such as would be admitted by men 
of all nations — that God himself is their author, then it is our in¬ 
cumbent duty to subject our understanding to the yoke of faith.” 

Though his Deism was not very clearly defined, Yoltaire 
was far from being an Atheist. He was a firm and consistent 
believer in the being of a God; but he was too wise a man to 
dogmatize on so abstruse and perplexed a subject. His fight 
was against systematized Christianity, against prejudice and 
persecution, and priestly thralldom. He believed that there 
was no possible redemption for the world save through the 
complete rooting up of the banyan-tree of superstition, be¬ 
neath whose poisonous shade mankind crouched in fear and 
misery. To the end of its destruction he employed every wea¬ 
pon that could be selected from the armory of poetry and phi¬ 
losophy, history and humor, sarcasm and science. The deadly 
damage of his assaults may be inferred from the fact that both 
Catholics and Protestants alike have considered him a more 
hateful and accursed object than the Devil himself. In the 
dark heart of superstition he planted to the hilt his keen and 
poison-tipped stiletto which will rankle there till it be vexed to 
utter death. 

“And when we observe how Reason more powerfully asserts 
her sway now than of yore; how men are more disinclined to 


446 


VOLTAIKE. 


prostrate their intelligence before dogmatic absurdities; hovr 
Freethought is spreading day by day; we should reflect on our 
manifold obligations to the arch-heretic, Voltaire, and bless his 
memory for his noble labors in the cause of Truth.” “Voltaire' 
was the one great mind of his day, whose thoughts engrossed 
the attention of all men. He was great by his learning, his 
genius, and his benevolence,—and this man was the champion 
of Reason, the enemy of superstition, and an Infidel.” 

Says Quinet, in his lecture on the Romish Church: “I watch, 
for forty years, the reign of one man who is in himself the 
spiritual director, not of his country, but of his age. From the 
corner of his chamber, he governs the kingdom of spirits, 
intellects are every day regulated by his; one word written by 
his hand traverses Europe. Princes love, and kings fear him; 
they think they are not sure of their kingdoms if he be not 
with them. Whole nations, on their side, adopt without discus¬ 
sion, and emulously repeat, every syllable that falls from his 
pen. Who exercises this incredible power, which had been 
nowhere seen since the Middle Ages? Is he another Gregory 
VII.? Is he a Pope? No —Voltaire.” 

The eloquent Lamartine pays the following tribute to the 
Sage of Ferney: 

“If we judge of men by what they have done, then Voltaire 
is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one 
has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, 
and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the 
minds of men; his pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far 
mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire- 
of a theocracy. His genius was not force, but light . Heaven 
had destined him not to destroy, but to illuminate, and when¬ 
ever he trod, light followed him, for Reason (which is light) had 
destined him to be first, her poet, then her apostle, and lastly 
her idol.” 


X 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


447 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


As a statesman, a philosopher, and a man of practical use* 
fulness few men in the eighteenth, or any other century have 
surpassed Benjamin Franklin. The world owes him a debt of 
gratitude which is a perfect pleasure to hold in remembrance. 
He was born in Boston, Mass., on the seventeenth of January,. 
1706. He was the youngest son and fifteenth child of a family 
of seventeen children. His father, Josiah Franklin, emigrated 
from England to America in 1682, and followed the business of 
tallow chandler and soap boiler in Boston. Benjamin, at the 
young age of ten years began to do service in his father’s 
shop, at cutting wicks, running of errands, etc. But not being 
pleased with the monotonous routine of the duties he had to 
perform, he early indulged in a desire to go to sea. That he 
might not do this, his father bound him to his brother James, 
a printer. Benjamin had here free access to books for which 
from early childhood he had a special fondness. While he was 
still an apprentice he commenced to write for the paper which 
his brother published, and it may well be conceived that he 
indulged in a very commendable pride when he first saw the 
productions of his pen in print. 

His brother being of a severe and exacting disposition, Ben¬ 
jamin found the situation irksome, so much so, that at the 
age of seventeen he privately left Boston without informing 
his father or his brother. He took vessel for New York, and 
from thence to Philadelphia, partly by water and partly on 
foot. In that city he obtained employment as a journeyman 
printer. In the following year, having been encouraged by 
promise of assistance from a citizen of Philadelphia, he resolved 
to engage in business for himself. With this view, he made a 
voyage to England to purchase type and printing material. 
Having been disappointed in the promises made, he was com¬ 
pelled to remain in England over a year at his trade. He 
returned to Philadelphia in 1726, and in 1729, with the aid of 


448 


BENJAMIN FKANKLIN. 


other friends, he started the printing business on his own 
account. He became the editor and proprietor of the “Penn¬ 
sylvania Gazette ”; and in 1730 he married Miss Deborah Eead, 
whose acquaintance he made several years previous y. His 
abilities as a writer soon gave his paper a popularity that made 
it remunerative. In 1732 he commenced the publication of his 
famous “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” which acquired a reputation 
rarely excelled. His aim was to make his Almanac and his 
paper the vehicles of useful and practical information, and to 
inculcate the habits and rules of frugality and strict economy. 
In this special field he has never had a superior in this 
country. 

To Franklin is due the credit of founding the Philadelphia 
Library, which has remained in existence nearly one and a half 
centuries, and is still in a most flourishing condition. He was 
made successive? ’ Clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsyl¬ 
vania (1736); Postmaster (1737), and Deputy-Postmas er General 
(1753). In 1757 he made his second voyage to England, this time 
to plead the cause of the colonies in connection with the postal 
laws. In this enterprise he was successful, having accomplished 
the object of his journey. 

Franklin at this early date had become distinguished in the 
scientific world by his successful experiment with electricity, 
and which have immortalized his name. The story of his flying 
his kite and. drawing electricity from the clouds is familiar to 
all. His discoveries in this connection gave him a prominent 
position among the world’s great philosophers anil discoverers. 
His essays touching this subject soon attracted the at ention of 
the learned men of Europe as well as in this country. The 
same was brought before the Royal Society of London, and his 
Essays on Electricity were also translated into French and 
•spread over the continent. 

Without any applicat'on on his part and without the pay¬ 
ment of the customary admission fee of twenty-five guineas he 
was made member of the Royal Society. Rich amends were made 
for any want of appreciation tha at first had been wit hheld. The 
Royal Society bestowed upon him the Copty gold medal (dated 
1753) and afterwards furnished him with their transactions with¬ 
out charge. Before he left England, in 1762, the degree of 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


449 


Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the Universities of 
Edinburgh and Oxford. In alluding to Franklin’s account of 
his electrical experiments Sir Humphrey Davy observes: “A 
singular felicity of induction guided all his researches, and by 
very small means he established very grand truths; the style 
.and manner of his publication are almost as worthy of admira¬ 
tion as the doctrine it contains .... He has written 
equally for the uninitiated and the philosopher.” 

In 1764 Franklin was again sent by the Assembly of Penn¬ 
sylvania as agent to England and was subsequently appointed 
agent by many of the other colonies. The policy of taxing the 
'Colonies had already been agitated; and he was instructed by 
those who sent him to use his efforts against such a measure. 
The British ministry, however, had formed their plans and the 
Stamp Act was passed early in 1765. In the examination before 
the House of Commons in 1766 Franklin’s talents, skill and 
Taried information were made conspicuous and the repeal of 
the obnoxious Stamp Act was the result, but other objectiona¬ 
ble laws were allowed to remain in force. Franklin labored 
earnestly to prevent the rupture between the mother country 
and the colonies which seemed inevitable, and when fully con¬ 
vinced of this he returned home and took part in promoting 
the cause of independence. 

It was during this visit to England that Franklin became 
acquainted with Thomas Paine and induced him to make 
America his home. A friendship was then begun which contin¬ 
ued many years. 

Franklin arrived at Philadelphia May 5th, 1775 after an 
absence of more than ten years, The day after his arrival he 
was unanimously elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania a 
delegate to the second Continental Congress then about to 
assemble. He was one of the committee of five chosen by 
Congress to prepare the “Declaration of Independence,” which 
having been adopted July 4, 1776, he signed with the other 
leading patriots. 

Towards the close of the same year he was sent as an ambas¬ 
sador t > the Court of France. He arrived in Paris December the 
twenty-first. To him is almost entirely due the credit of effect¬ 
ing between France and the United States the Treaty of Alliance, 


450 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


the stipulations of which were so highly favorable to our own 
country. This Treaty, signed in Paris, February 6th, 1778 was 
a very important factor in securing the independence of the 
American Colonies. Had not the aid of France thus been 
secured it is highly probable England would have succeeded in 
suppressing the young aspirant for national life and liberty. 

Franklin also took an important part in the negotiation of 
peace with England, and signed the preliminary articles of a 
treaty of peace at Paris on November 30, 1782. The ultimate 
treaty of peace was signed at Paris by Franklin, Adams and 
Jay, September 3, 1783. Franklin afterwards negotiated a treaty 
with Prussia, in which he inserted a provision against priva¬ 
teering. “This treaty” said Washington, “makes a new era 
in negotiation. It is the most liberal treaty that has ever been 
entered into between independent powers.” 

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in September 1785 and in 
the next month was chosen President of Pennsylvania for a year 
and -was re-elected in 1786 and 1787. He was a delegate to the 
convention which met at Philadelphia in May 1787 to form a 
Constitution of the United States. At the close of the Conven¬ 
tion he made a speech in which he said, “ I consent to this 
Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not 
sure it is not the best.” His last public act was a signature of 
a memorial addressed to Congress by the Abolition Society of 
which he was President. 

In person Franklin was of medium stature, well formed and 
strongly built, with a light complexion and grey eyes. As a 
philosopher he was remarkable for simplicity of character and 
practical common sense. He deemed nothing connected with 
the welfare of the human race as unworthy his attention, and 
it is said of him that he rarely gave his attention to any sub¬ 
ject without permanent good results arising from the same. 

Franklin died in Philadelphia on the seventeenth of April, 
1790, aged eighty-four years. He left a son and daughter. The 
sou, William, was Governor of New Jersey, and the daughter, 
Sarah Bache. His remains were entombed in the cemetery at 
the southeastern angle of Fifth and Arch streets, Philadelphia. 

Franklin left a very interesting autobiography of the earlier 
part of his life (up to the age of fifty-two). A continuation was 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


451 


made by Jared Sparks and published, preceded by Franklin’s 
entire works. Franklin’s style was simple, clear, direct and 
forcible. He never used a redundancy of words to convey his 
ideas. As a speaker, Sparks says of him, “ He never pretended to 
the accomplishments of an orator or debater. He seldom spoke 
in deliberative assembly except for some special object, and then 
briefly and with great simplicity of manner and language.” 

Mirabeau, the French nobleman, patriot, and statesman, 
thus said of Franklin: “Antiquity would have raised altars to 
this mighty genius who, to the advancement of mankind, com¬ 
paring in his mind the heavens and the earth, and was able 
to restrain thunderbolts and tyrants.” Lord Chatham, in a 
public speech made in 1775, characterized Franklin as “one 
whom all Europe held in high estimation for his knowledge 
and wisdom, and ranked with our Boyle and Newtons; who 
was an honor, not to the English nation only, but to human 
nature.” “His style.” said Lord Jeffrey, “has all the vigor and 
even conciseness of Swift, without any of his harshness. It 
is in no degree more flowery, yet both elegant and lively. . . 
The peculiar charm of his writings, and his great merit also in 
action, consisted in the clearness with which he saw his object, 
and the bold and steady pursuit of it by the surest and the 
shortest road.” 

In his “Reflections” in his elaborate “Life of Franklin,” 
Parton, as a commentary upon the career of the great man, 
makes this catalogue of Franklin’s good deeds: “He estab¬ 
lished and inspired the Junta, the most sensible, useful, and 
pleasant club of which we have any knowledge. 

He founded the Philadelphia Library, parent of a thousand 
libraries, an immense and endless good to the whole of the 
United States. 

He edited the best newspaper in the colonies, one which 
published no libels, and fomented no quarrels, which quick¬ 
ened the intelligence of Pennsylvania and gave an onward 
impulse to the Press of America. 

He was was the first who turned to great account the engine 
of advertising, an indispensible element in modern business. 

He published ‘Poor Richard,’ by the means of which so 
much of the wit and wisdom of all ages as its readers could 


452 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


appreciate and enjoy, was brought home to their minds, in 
such words as they could understand and remember forever. 

He created the post-office system of America, and forebore to 
avail himself, as postmaster, of privileges from which he had 
formerly suffered. 

It was he who caused Philadelphia to be paved, lighted, an;l 
cleaned. 

As fuel became scarce in the vicinity of the colonial towns, 
he invented the Pranklin Stove, which economized it, and sug¬ 
gested the subsequent warming inventions, in which America 
beats the world. Besides making a free gift of this invention 
to the public, he generously wrote an extensive pamphlet 
explaining its construction and utility. 

He delivered civilized mankind from the nuisance, once uni¬ 
versal, of smoky chimneys. 

He was the first effective preacher of the blessed gospel of 
ventilation. He spoke, and the windows of hospitals were 
lowered; consumption ceased to gasp, and fever to inhale 
poison. 

He devoted the leisure of seven years and all the energy of 
his genius, to the science of electricity, which gave a stronger 
impulse to scientific enquiry than any other event of that cen¬ 
tury. He taught Goethe to experiment in electricity, and set 
all students to making electrical machines. He robbed thunder 
of i'.s terrors and lightning of its power to destroy. 

He was chiefly instrumental in founding the first high school 
of Pennsylvania, and died protesting against the abuse of the 
funds of that institution in teaching American youth the lan¬ 
guages of Greece and Rjme, while French, Spanish, and Ger¬ 
man were spoken in the streets and were required in the com¬ 
merce of the wharves. 

He founded the American Philosophical Society, the first 
organization in America of the friends of science. 

He suggested the use of mineral manures, introduced the bas¬ 
ket willow, and promoted the early culture of silk. 

He lent the indispesable assistance of his name and tact to 
the founding of the Philadelphia Hospital. 

Entering into politics he broke the spell of Quakerism, and 
woke Pennsylvania from the dream of unarmed safety. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


453 


He led Pennsylvania in its thirty years struggle with the 
mean tyranny of the Penns, a rehearsal of the subsequent con¬ 
test, with the King of Great Britain. 

When the Indians were ravaging and scalping within eighty 
miles of Philadelphia, General Benjamin Franklin led the 
troops o the city against them. 

He was the author of the first scheme of uniting the colo¬ 
ns s, a scheme so suitable that it was adopted, in its essential 
features, in the union of the States, and binds us together 
to this day. 

He assisted England to keep Canada, when there was dan¬ 
ger of its falling back into the hands of a reactionary race. 

More Ilian any other man, he was instrumental in causing 
the repeal of the Stamp Act, which deferred the inevitable 
struggle until the colonies were strong enough to triumph. 

More than any other man, he educated the colonies up to in¬ 
dependence, and secured for them in England the sympathy and 
support of the Brights, the Cobdens, the Spencers, and Mills 
of that day. His examination before the House of Commons 
.orcibly struck both countries; and Franklin would have kept 
England right but for the inpenetrable stupidity of George III. 

He discovered the temperature of the Gulf Stream. 

He discovered that Northeast storms begin in the Southwest. 

He invented the invaluable contrivance by which a fire con¬ 
sumes its own smoke. 

He madf important discoveries respecting the causes of the 
most universal of all diseases—colds. 

He pointed out the advantages of building ships in water¬ 
tight compartments, taking the hint from the Chinese. 

He expounded the theory of navigation, which is now uni¬ 
versally adopted by intelligent seamen, and of which a charla¬ 
tan and a traitor has received the credit. 

At the beginning of the revolution he was the soul of the party 
whose sentiments Thomas Paine spoke in Common Sense.' 

In Paris as the antidote to the restless distrust of Arthur 
Lee, and the restless vanity of John Adams, he saved the Alli¬ 
ance over and over again, and brought the negotiations for 
peace to a successful close. His mere presence in Europe was 
a moving plea for the rights of man. 


454 


BENJAMIN FBANKLIN. 


In the Convention of 1787 his indomitable good humor was, 
probably, the uniting element wanting which the Convention 
would have dissolved without having done its work. 

His last labors were for the abolition of slavery and the aid 
of its emancipated victims. 

Having during a very long life, instructed, stimulated, 
cheered, amused and elevated his countrymen and all mankind 
he was faithful to them to the end, and added to his other 
services the edifying spectacle of a calm, cheerful, and triumph¬ 
ant death; leaving behind him a mass of writings, full of 
his own kindness, humor, and wisdom, to perpetuate his influ¬ 
ence and sweeten the life of coming generations. 

Such is the brief record of the more conspicuous actions of 

Benjamin Franklin.But to conclude, we find that 

several fortunate circumstances in the lot of Franklin were not 
due to any act of his own: such as his great gifts, his birth in 
a pure and virtuous family, his birth in large America, in an 
age of free enquiry, and his early opportunities of mental cul¬ 
ture.Men have lived who were more magnificently 

endowed than Franklin. Men have lived Avhose lives were 
more splendid and heroic than his. If the inhabitants of the 
earth were required to select, to represent them in some celes¬ 
tial Congress composed of the various orders of intelligent 
beings, a specimen of the human race and we should send a 
Shakspere, the Celestials would say: “He is one of us; or a 
Napoleon, the fallen angels might claim him. But if we 
desired to select a man who could present in his own character 
the largest amount of human worth, with the least of human 
frailty, and in his own lot on earth the largest amount of enjoy¬ 
ment with the least of suffering; one whose character was esti¬ 
mable without being too exceptionally good, and his lot happy 
without being too generally unattainable; one who could bear 
in his letter of credence, with the greatest truth, This is a Man, 
and his life on earth was such as good men may live, I know 
not who, of the renowned of all ages, we could more fitly 
choose to represent us in that high Court of the Universe, than 
Benjamin Franklin, printer, of Philadelphia.” 

Humor and cheerfulness were marked characteristics of 
Franklin. He was lively in conversation and ever retained a 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


455 


quick appreciation of wit and mirthfulness. In religion he was 
a Moralist and a Deist. He believed in the existence of a 
Supreme Being, but not in the divinity of Jesus Christ. In his 
early manhood he was an avowed Freethinker, and even an 
Atheist, but with the advance of years he gradually suspected 
the correctness of some of his extreme views. Among liis early 
friends were some Freethinkers and two or three of them 
turned out indifferently. Whether this circumstance had the 
effect to modify Franklin’s views is not easy to determine. It 
can hardly be supposed, however, that the wrong course of so 
small a number could convince him of the fallacy of any given 
line of thought; for if such were a true criterion, no belief 
under heaven could escape rejection. 

Franklin, at no time of his life was belligerent upon theolog¬ 
ical subjects. He was disposed to quietly enjoy his own relig¬ 
ious convictions and to allow others to do the same. He w r as 
not an obtrusive, outspoken defender of heretical views, but 
politic, cautious and reticent. In this respect he was different 
from Thomas Paine. They were friends, and upon many sub¬ 
jects they believed in unison. While they were agreed upon 
the principal sentiments of the “Age of Reason,'’ Franklin is 
said to have advised against its publication. Voltaire and 
Franklin entertained a high regard for each other. They met 
but once, at a theater in Paris, when they embraced each other 
affectionately and expressed the kindest greetings and consider¬ 
ations. 

As far back as 1728 Franklin made this formal written state¬ 
ment of his belief and called it his creed. 

“ There is one Supreme, most perfect Being, Author and 
Father of the gods themselves. He is the infinite and incom¬ 
prehensible ; he does not expect nor desire the worship of 
man; he is above it. But as there is something in man which 
inclines him to devotion, it is reasonable to conclude that it is 
his duty to pay divine regards to something, 

I conceive, then, that the Infinite has created many beings 
or gods, vastly superior to man, who can better conceive his 
affections than we, and turn him a more rational and glorious 
praise; as, among men, the praise of the ignorant or of chil¬ 
dren is not regarded by the ingenious painter or architect, who 


456 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


is rather honored and pleased with the approbation of wise? 
men, and artists. It may be these created gods are immortal; 
or it may be, that, after many ages, they are changed, and 
others supply their places. Howbeit, I conceive that each of 
these is exceeding wise and good and very powerful; and that 
each has made for himself one religious sun, attended with a 
beautiful and admirable system of planets. It is that particu¬ 
lar wise and good God, who is the author and owner of our 
system, that I propose, for the object of my praise and ador¬ 
ation.’' 

After this rather beautiful speculation, he proceeded to give 
his views of the character of this particular God, followed by a 
form of invocation similar, in some respects to the grandest of 
David’s Psalms, and this was succeeded by a liturgy. 

In his intercourse with friends it was his custom to desig¬ 
nate himself a Deist, but he denied being an Atheist. He, on 
one occasion resented a sentence in Rev. George White field's 
Journal that implied there was little difference between a Deist 
and an Atheist. Whitefleld wrote, “Mr. B. is a Deist, I had 
almost said an Atheist.” “That is,” said Franklin, “ Chalk, I 
had almost said Charcoal .” It was his custom to amuse himself, 
as Parton informs us, at the expense of Bible admirers, “by 
opening the Bible and pretending to read therefrom his own 
version of an ancient parable, which represented Abraham as 
turning a heretic out of his tent into the wilderness. God, 
according to the parable, rebuked Abraham sharply for his 
conduct, saying, “ Have I borne with him these ninety and 
eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstand¬ 
ing his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art 
thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?” The remarks of 
the scripturians at these improvisations were often diverting to 
Franklin. 

In a letter to Whitefleld, Franklin used this language: “I 
do not think that thanks and compliments, though repeated 
weekly, can discharge our real obligations to each other, and 
much less those to our Creator. You will see in this my notion 
of good works, that I am far from expecting to merit heaven 
by them. By heaven we understand a state of happiness, 
infinite in degree, and eternal in duration. I do nothing to 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 


457' 


deserve such a reward. He that, for giving a draught of water 
to a thirsty person, should expect to be paid with a good plan¬ 
tation, would be modest in his demands compared with those 
who think they deserve heaven for the little good they do on 
earth. . . . For my part, I have not the vanity to think I 
deserve it, the folly to expect it, nor the ambition to desire it.” 

Franklin was not one of those who deem it a duty to prose¬ 
cute a warfare upon the errors and superstitions of his fellow 
men; neither was he at any time a believer in the dogmas of 
Christianity. If he admitted that Christianity had effected good, 
in the world, he never gave his assent to all the claims it 
sets up. 

During Franklin’s last illness he reeeived a letter from Dr.. 
Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College asking him to give his 
portrait for the college library, and also for an exposition of 
his religious views, more especially with regard to Jesus of 
Nazareth. In his reply Franklin used this language: “ I am 
now in my eighty-fifth year and very infirm. Here is my creed: 
I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That he^ 
governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped. 
That the most acceptable service we can render to him is doing 
good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, 
and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its- 
conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in 
all sound religion. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of 
whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals 
and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever 
saw, or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various 
corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dis¬ 
senters in England, doubts as to his divinity; though it is a. 
question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and 
think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect 
soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.” 

Soon after writing these lines, but after suffering a great 
deal of pain induced by the nature of his malady, he peacefully 
closed his eyes in death, revered and loved by all his country¬ 
men, and honored by the entire civilized world. When he passed 
away a great light was extinguished—a great man went to his 
final repose. 


458 


LINN^US. 


LTNNiEUS. 

This famous Swedish botanist was born at Bashult, in Sma- 
land, May 24, 1707, and was the son of a village curate, who, 
it is said, so far underrated his son’s capacity that he made 
him an apprentice to a shoemaker after he had reached the 
age of seventeen without making much progress in his studies. 
In 1727, however, he was sent to the University of Lund to 
study medicine, and his inclination for natural history was 
favored by Professor Stobmus. After struggling with poverty 
for several years, he at last gained the notice of Professor 
Rudbeck, of Upsal University. That botanist took him into 
his house, and made him his assistant lecturer, giving him the 
use of a fine library and garden. About 1730 he conceived the 
idea of a reform in botanical method and nomenclature, and 
began the composition of several great works. At the expense 
of the Royal Academy of Upsal, he went on his celebrated 
journey on foot through Lapland in 1732, the results of which 
appeared in his “Elora Lapponica,” (1737). 

After residing for some years in Holland and visiting Eng¬ 
land, he married a daughter of Dr. Moore in 1739, and was, in 
1740, appointed Professor of Physic and Botany in the Univer¬ 
sity of Upsal. He also became physician to the king, who 
created him a Knight of the Polar Star, and conferred on him 
a pension, with a patent of nobility. He was the founder and 
first president of the Academy of Stockholm, and a member of 
several foreign societies. He traveled through all the north¬ 
western countries of Europe in eager pursuit of his favorite 
science. 

He had long ago become alive to the necessity of inventing 
methods of distribution and strict definition capable of embrac¬ 
ing all plants, and founded on characters well discriminated; 
and of extending the same method of classification to animals. 
The first sketch of this great enterprise appeared in two small 
volumes, entitled “The System of Nature, or the Three King¬ 
doms of Nature exhibited methodically in Classes, Orders, 


LIN N 2E U S. 


459 


Genera, and Species;” (1735), and “ Fundamenta Botanica,” 
(1736). The characters of genera were largely developed in his 
“Genera of Plants according to the Number, Figure, Position, 
etc. of the Parts of Fructification,” (1737). But it was in 1751 
that his botanical philosophy was reproduced in its entirety, 
arranged in its parts, and enforced by examples in his “Phi- 
losophia Botanica,” (1751). “Availing himself of the advantages 
which he derived from a large share of eloquence and an ani¬ 
mated style, he never failed to display, in a lively and convinc¬ 
ing manner, the relation subsisting between the study of nature 
and the public good, and to incite the great to countenance and 
protect it. Under his culture, botany raised itself in Sweden to 
a state of perfection unknown elsewhere, and was thence dis¬ 
seminated throughout Europe. Linnaeus system of classifica¬ 
tion first gave to botany a clear and precise language; and, 
although his system was an artificial one, it yet paved the way 
for other discoverers, and undoubtedly led to the natural system 
of Jussieu.” In 1753 he produced his “Species of Plants,” an 
important work, in which he adopted the happy idea of desig¬ 
nating each species by a single epithet added to the name of 
the germs. He also applied his methods with success to the 
animal kingdom in his “Swedish Fauna,” (1744,) and several 
enlarged editions of his “System of Nature.” His artificial 
sexual system was for a long time universally adopted; but has 
now been entirely susperseded in the botanical world by the 
natural method of Jussieu. Linnaeus died, after a life of con¬ 
stant labor, in 1788, aged 71 years. 


460 


HUME. 


HUME. 


This eminent Scotch philosopher and historian was born im 
Edinburgh, April 26, 1711. He was the youngest child of Joseph 
Hume or Home, who, though related to the Earl of Home, was 
himself but a poor laird. He was destined for the law, but 
having little inclination for that profession, he tried mercantile 
pursuits, and became, in 1734, clerk in an eminent house at 
Bristol. Keferring to the time when he was studying for the 
law, he says in his Autobiography, “ My studious disposition, 
my sobriety, and my industry gave my family a notion that 
the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an insur¬ 
mountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philoso¬ 
phy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring 
upon Yoet and Yinnius, Cicero and Yirgil were the authors 
which I was secretly devouring.’’ From motives of economy, 
he went to France in 1734 or 1735, and spent about two years at 
Bheims and La Fleche, to which latter place he was attracted 
by the Jesuits’ college and library. Here he was moved by a 
great ambition, not less than to become the Bacon of moral 
science. So his “ Treatise on Human Nature ” was published 
in London in 1738. But it fell still-born from the press. It did 
not even excite a murmur of criticism, though Mackintosh 
afterwards called it “The first systematic attack on all the 
principles of knowledge and belief, and the most formidable, if 
universal skepticism could ever be more than a mere exercise 
of ingenuity.” He passed several ensuing years in Scotland in 
his favorite studies. Here in 1741 or 1742 he issued the first part 
of his immortal “Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary.” 
These were moderately successful from the first. In 1747 he 
was appointed secretary to General St. Clair, and accompanied 
him in his embassy to Yienna and Turin, passing two years on 
the continent. Returning to his brother’s residence in Scotland, 
he composed an “Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,” 
and the second part of his Essays, which appeared in 1752, with 
the title of “Political Discourses.” About this time he com- 


HUME, 


461 


•menced his celebrated “History of England,” the first volume 
of which was published in 1754. He describes its reception in 
these terms: “I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disappro¬ 
bation, and even detestation: English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig 
and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, 
patriot and courtier, united their rage . . .; and after the 
first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more 
mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar 
told me that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of 
it.” The subsequent volumes, however, were better appreciated, 
and the whole work became very popular and raised the author 
to affluence. His historical style is generally admired, as grace¬ 
ful, natural, and perspicuous. Besides the profit th s work 
brought him, he obtained a pension through Lord Bute. In 
1763 he accompanied the Earl of Hertford on his embassy to 
Paris, where, in 1765, he remained as charge d'affaires, much 
delighted by the real ovation given him by the Parisians. The 
year following he returned home, and became under-Secretary 
of State. On his invitation the celebrated Jean Jacques Bous- 
;seau visited him in London, and found a quiet asylum during 
a short period. But the restless Frenchman soon quarreled 
with his friend, and returned home. In 1769 Hume returned to 
his native country on a small, but to a man of his frugal 
habits, independent income. He died in Edinburgh in August, 
1776. Besides the work above named he wrote the “Natural 
History of Beligion,” (1755) “Dialogues Concerning Natural 
Eeligion,” a posthumous work, published in 1783; and a charm¬ 
ing aut obiography, which, says Mackintosh, “ is remarkable 
above most, if not all writings of that sort, for hitting the 
degree < f interest between coldness and egotism which becomes 
a modest man in speaking of his private history.” His works 
on religion especially aroused the anger of the clergy, many of 
whom attempted to refute them. 

Hume’s personal character was amiable and moral. In spite 
of his opinions, the good and wise Adam Smitii thus publicly 
wrote of him: “Upon the whole, I have always considered 
him, both during his lifetime and since his death, as approach¬ 
ing as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, 
as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit.” His name 


462 


HUME. 


is also imperishable in our literature. But for all this, the very 
mention of this good, prudent, and highly talented man always 
rouses the most vehement feelings of opposition in the minds 
of learned religionists and metaphysicians. Why? Because he 
pronounced both matter and mind to be figments! It happened 
in this wise: “Locke had shown that all our knowledge was 
dependent upon experience. Berkeley had shown that we had 
no experience ot‘ an external world independent of perception; 
nor could we have any experience. He pronounced matter to 
be a figment. Hume took up the line where Berkeley had cast 
it and flung it once more into the deep sea, endeavoring to- 
fathom the mysteries of being. Probing deeper in the direction 
Berkeley had taken, he found that not only was Matter a fig¬ 
ment, Mind was a figment also. If the occult stratum [mat¬ 
ter], which men had inferred to explain material phenomena, 
could be denied, because not founded on experience; so also, 
said Hume, must we deny the occult substratum [mind], which 
men have inferred to explain mental phenomena. All that we 
have any experience of, is impressions and ideas. The substance 
of which these are supposed to be impressions, is occult —is a 
mere inference; the substance in which these impressions are 
supposed to be, is equally occult —is a mere inference. Matter 
is but a collection of impressions. Mind is but a succession of 
impressions and ideas.” Indeed, “Locke had already shown 
that we are as ignorant of spirit as of substance. We know 
mind only in its manifestation; we cannot know it per se as a 
substratum. Hume’s argument, therefore, had a firm founda¬ 
tion in philosophy. He only concluded from admitted prem¬ 
ises.” And thus was Berkeley’s dogmatic Idealism converted 
into Skepticism. Hume, speaking of Berkeley, says: “Most of 
the writings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best 
lessons of Skepticism which are to be found either among 
the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He 
professes, however, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with 
great truth) to have composed his book against the Skeptics, as 
well as against the Atheists and Freethinkers. But that all his 
arguments, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely 
skeptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and 
produce no conviction.” 


HUME. 


463 


This notice is already lengthy. It was intended to dilate 
somewhat on the logical consequences of Hume’s doctrines, 
and their effects on succeeding systems of thought. But we 
will close by saying that his philosophy was complete Skep¬ 
ticism—that he pushed his conclusions to the uttermost point 
to which logic could carry him —but that, notwithstanding all 
this, having in his system denied all that men believe, in 
his daily life he denied his own system. The damage he did to. 
the established and authorized creeds was great and lasting; 
and certainly he did more than any other one man to show the 
utter vanity of ontological speculations about both matter and 
mind, and thereby thoroughly clipped the gauzy wings of phi¬ 
losophical fancy which had been growing through the ages on 
the solid body of Common Sense. To-day any and every phi¬ 
losopher who prates about matter or mind as entities to be 
defined and gauged apart from phenomena is at once put down, 
by the scientific spirit of the age, as one who talks, more or 
less flippantly, about what he does not know, to those who da 
not understand him. To-day, in fact, metaphysical philosophy 
is dead and lying in state to be kept a little longer as it were on 
ice , and occasionally galvanized into hideous contortions, but 
never to come to life again. Hume was the Brutus, who, more 
than any other conspirator, did it unto death. Requiescat in 
pace/ But hail, thrice hail, young Science, with thy infallible 
method, with thy phenomena and laws and thy utter contempt 
for all inquiry into entities and causes , efficient or final. Thou 
art indeed the Liberator and Savior of mankind, and Hume was 
one of thy greatest prophets ! 


464 


DIDEROT. 


DIDEROT. 


This eminent French philosopher and savant was born at 
Langres, in Champagne, in 1712 or 1713, and was the son of a 
cutler, who gave him a good education, and brought him up to 
the study of the law. Having quitted this study with disgust, 
be went to Paris in his youth, with a ruling passion for literary 
pursuits. Here he was obliged to support himself by teaching 
and translating, and passed many years in poverty and obscur¬ 
ity, but contented in his ample intellectual resources. About 
the age of thirty he married. Rousseau and D’Alembert were 
among his early friends. His first work, entitled “Philosophic 
Thoughts,” was published in 1746. It produced a great sensa¬ 
tion. Its doctrines being thought unsound, it was condemned 
to the fire by Parliament! In 1749 he was imprisoned a few 
months for the publication of his “ Letter on the Blind, for the 
Use of tlio e who See.” On recovering his liberty, he wrote a 
“Letter on the Deaf and Dumb.” 

Diderot’s great reputation is founded on his grand project 
of the “ Encyclopedie ” — a Dictionary of Science, Arts, and 
Trades. The scheme was one of immense labor and difficulty, 
and was chiefly accomplished by his own ardent zeal and devo¬ 
tion. He wrote llie articles on ancient philosophy and on the 
arts and trades, and, in conjunction with D’Alembert, super¬ 
vised the other parts of the work. The first volume was issued 
in 1751, and attracted great attention. Its publication was 
suspended several times by government, and D’Alembert retired 
from the enterprise in 1759; but it was completed in 1765. The 
“Encyclopedie” has its defects, of course; but they mostly arose 
fr m the haste and incompetence of some of the contributors. 
“In its execution,” said Diderot, “I had neither the time nor 
the power to be particular in the choice of my contributors, 
who were mostly inferior men, badly paid, and consequently 
careless in their work.” But the work was, on the whole, a 
grand monument to the new Infidel philosophy of the day; 


DIDEROT. 


465 


and the ominous precursor of the first French Revolution. Its 
pages are full of eloquent protests against all f rins of tyranny, 
and powerfully charged with the defiant spirit of religious, 
political, and social liberty. It will well repay perusal <ven at 
the present day. 

Diderot is regarded as the chief of the skeptical school 
which came to be known as that of the Encyclopedists. There 
is no doubt that he was a professed Atheist, though one of his 
biographers feebly attempts to defend him from the charge. 

Catherine II., of Russia, settled a handsome pension on 
Diderot in 1765, and invited him to her capital, which he visited 
in 1773; but he soon returned to Paris. While engaged on the 
“ Encyclopedic,” he wrote some other books, such as “The 
Father of a Family,” and “The Natural Son.” He is the 
author of numerous other works, such as “The Principles of 
Moral Philosophy,” “ Reflections on the Interpretation of Na¬ 
ture,” “The Code of Nature,” “The Sixth Sense,” and an 
“Essay on the Reigns of Claudius and Nero,” chiefly devoted 
to the vindication, or rather eulogy of Seneca, which is esteem¬ 
ed by many as his ablest production. He also contributed 
largely to some of the most popular French works of his time, 
•such as Raynal’s “Philosophic History,” “L’Esprit,” by Hel- 
vetius, and “The System of Nature,” by D’Holbach. As a 
writer, he displays great talent and eloquence, but may be 
sometimes deficient in judgment, at least if we listen to his 
most cordial haters — the Christian critics of his time. But his 
judgment, nevertheless, turned out to be efficient enough for 
great purposes of revolution and reformation ; and Humanity will 
ever be deeply Indebted to this bold son of Lib Tty and of Genius. 
No-wonder the doors of the Academy were kept closed against 
him, although none less than Yoltaire solicited his election. 

He died in Paris in 1784. The last remark he was heard to 
make by his daughter, shortly before his death, was that “the 
first step toward philosophy is incredulity.” It is also quite 
gratifying to learn that he made himself rich by his writings 
and publications. That was certainly of great consequence to 
him when alive, though one of his religious censors doubts 
wh-'ther riches so obtained “is of consequence when a man 
comes to his death-bed”! 


466 


ROUSSEAU. 


ROUSSEAU. 


According to Coleridge’s eloquent parallel, Jean Jacques 
Rousseau may truthfully be called the Luther of the French 
Revolution. His life was one of the most extraordinary charac¬ 
ter. He was also, most certainly, mentally diseased, and took 
up a host of unreal fancies, against which he strove, as though 
they were not children of his own brain. He was of a restless, 
proud, and fretful disposition, as many of the greatest heads 
and hearts of the race have ever been; and his intense 
morbidity caused him to imagine that there was a conspiracy 
of men of letters against him, and that all mankind were his 
enemies. But for all this, he was Rousseau,— “in one deep 
sense the one among the children of men! ” 

He was born at Geneva, June 28th, 1712, and was the son of 
Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker. His mother, whose maiden 
name was Bernard — a very amiable and highly gifted woman 
— died during his infancy. This, he often said, was the first of 
his misfortunes. And then his father, when poor Jacques was. 
only ten years old, had to flee to Nyon, in consequence of a 
quarrel with a military officer, leaving his son at Geneva in the 
care of his uncle, M. Bernard. About 1726 he was apprenticed 
to an engraver, by whom he was so harshly treated that in 
March, 1728, he ran away in the direction of Savoy. He became 
a guest at the house of the well-known Madame de Warens, of 
Annecy, a benevolent lady, to whom he formed a lasting attach¬ 
ment. This lady, who had quitted the Protestant religion for 
the Catholic, appears, after all, to have had somewhat of the 
zeal of proselytism in her charity, for she sent the young 
fugitive to a Catholic seminary at Turin. Here, however, he 
changed his religion by a formal abjuration. Then he was 
employed for a short time at Turin as the servant of a countess; 
but his success was hindered by irregular habits and instability. 
He returned and became a second time an inmate of the house 
of Ma lame de Warens, who procured for him a situation as 


no iryyjiAU'. 


467 


clerk in the bureau of the cadastre. But this employment also 
he found to be uncongenial, and soon abandoned it, and adopted 
the profession of a teacher of music, (of which he was very 
fond,) although he was scarcely qualified to teach it. He 
obtained, however, a number of pupils. 

In the summer of 1736 Rousseau and Madame de Warens 
removed to a rural residence called Charmettes, near Cliambery, 
where they passed two or three years, which, he informs us, 
were among the happiest of his life. A series of bizarre adven¬ 
tures, absurd vagaries, and surprising vicissitudes marked his 
early career. Of these he has given a very candid and unre¬ 
served account in his “Confessions.” In 1741, having invented 
a system of musical notation by figures, which he hoped would 
redound to his reputation and promote his financial interests, 
he went to Paris, with only a few silver coins in his purse. 
Here he was introduced to the Academy of Sciences by Reau¬ 
mur, and read before that body a memoir on his system of 
notation. But the Academy decided that his system was neither 
new nor practicable. He lived in extreme poverty until he 
obtained, in 1743, the place of secretary to the French Ambas¬ 
sador to Venice, whom Rousseau characterized as an inefficient 
and corrupt official. From Venice, where he passed about 
eighteen months, he returned to Paris (in 1745), and formed 
intimacies with Diderot, Grimm, Madame d’ Epinay, and Ther- 
ese Le Vasseur. The last was an illiterate woman, of low birth, 
whom he finally married. They had five children, whom, we 
regret to say, Rousseau sent to the found.ing-hospital. In 1747 
his father died, leaving him a small legacy; after which he 
served as secretary to Madame Dupin of Paris, and her son, 
the receiver-general of finances. In 1750 he won a prize from 
the academy of D.jon for the best essay in answer to the 
question, “Whether the re-establishment of the arts and sciences 
has conduced to the corruption of morals ? ” He took the 
affirmative; and never was a paradox supported with greater 
eloquence. This success prompted him to produce another 
celebr ted discourse, which we shall notice below. 

“Rousseau’s physical infirmities, his fondness for paradox, 
and his hostility to conventional maxims and usurpation, com¬ 
bined to render him eccentric and singular in his manners and 


468 


ROUSSEAU. 


mode of living. He simplified his costume, renounced fashion¬ 
able and convivial parties, and affected a stern and sententious 
tone. According to his own con ession, a peculiar contempt for 
the riches and pleasures of the world was one of the prominent 
traits of his character. About 1750 he was appointed cashier to 
M. de Franceuil; but he soon resigned that place, because it 
seemed fatal to his health and incompatible with his princi¬ 
ples,— ‘for with what grace could the cashier of a receiver- 
general preach disinterestedness and poverty?’” 

For some time after this he earned a bare living by copying 
music. In 17 ->2 he produced his comic opera, “The Village 
Conjurer,” which had a great success, and was even performed 
before the king at Fontainebleau. Indeed, the king expressly 
wished to see the author; but the morbid timidity of Rousseau 
caused him to decline the honor. In 1753 he produced his cele¬ 
brated “Discourse on the Origin of Inequal ty among Men,” in 
which he maintains that all men are born equal. “ He was the 
fa'her of modern democracy,” says Professor Lowell, “and 
without him our Declaration of Independence would have 
wanted some of those sentences in which the immemorial long¬ 
ings of the poor and the dreams of solitary enthus asts were at 
last affirmed as axioms in the manifesto of a nation, so that 
all the world might hear.” 

In his “Letter on French Music” (1753) he evidently offended 
the national vanity; but being in many respects a typical 
Frenchman, he was soon forgiven. He had previously pub¬ 
lished a dissertation on French music, or rather a censure 
of it. 

In 1754 he visited Switzerland, and in his native city of 
Geneva was received with great honors. He passed his days in 
a boating tour or promenade around L ke Leman. In 1756 
Madame d’ Epinay persuaded him to occupy the “Hermitage,” 
a rural residence which she built expressly for him in the val¬ 
ley of Montmorency, near Paris. He resided there about two 
years, and began to write the voluptuous novel, or rather 
romance of “Julie, or the New Heloise,” (1760,) which contained 
his theory of love and marriage. It is in the form of letters, 
exhibiting a strange mixture of exquisite beauties of eloquence 
and sensibility, and some hideous deformities, at least of taste, 


RO U SSEAU. 


469 


if not of morals. It was greatly admired, and read with avidity. 
But this work was eclipsed by his “Emile,” (1762) a moral 
romance, in which he condemns every other mode of education 
but that of following nature. In this work he boldly and 
relentlessly attacks the miserable prophecies and miracles of 
Judaism and Chris ianity, vhile, from a mere point of taste, he 
draws a beautiful picture of the character and sentiments of 
the mythical hero of the gospels. Considered as a speculative 
philosophical treatise, it is a work of very high order. It pro¬ 
duced some useful reforms in the treatment of young children; 
but its tendency was considered so dangerous that it was 
burned by the public hangman at Geneva, and the Parliament 
of Paris issued an order for the arrest of Rousseau, who escaped 
by flight to the principality of Neufchatel, the governor of 
which, Lord Keith, received him with kindness. The same 
year that saw his “Emile” saw also his “Social Contract, or 
the Principles of Political Right,” in which he developed his 
political dream, his passionate belief in which was the plastic 
force during the popular and terrible days of the Revolution, 
and caused him to be entitled the hero-writer of that great but 
convulsive movement. 

In 1765, David Hume, who was then in France, offered the 
exiled author of “Emile” an asylum in England. As we have 
already intimated (see Art. “Hume,”) Rousseau accepted the 
invitation, but soon quarreled with his host, and, as we now 
believe, not without cause. “He was annoyed by an offensive 
and libelous letter published in the journals with the signature 
of the King of Prussia; but the real author of it was Horace 
Walpole. It is stated by M. Morin . . . that Hume avowed 
in a letter published in 1800, that he co-operated in the redac¬ 
tion of the forged letter from the King of Prussia.” Having 
become possessed by a suspicion that Hume was not his true 
friend, Rousseau returned to France in May, 1767, where he 
resided, with his wife, until 1778, always on the “ ragged edge ” 
of poverty. Among his later works were a “ Dictionary of 
Music,” (1777) and his wonderful autobiographic “Confessions,” 
which he began to write about 1766, but which were not pub¬ 
lished until about four years after his death. Botany was one 
of his favorite pursuits when in the country. In the spring of 


470 


ROUSSEAU. 


1778 he removed to Ernu'nonville, where he died, somewhat 
suddenly, on the 2d of July in the same year, at the age of 
sixty-six. 

Rousseau was a man of middle stature and well propor¬ 
tioned. Professor Lowell says: “It was perhaps his sensibility 
to the surrounding atmosphere of feeling and speculation 
which made Rousseau more directly influential on contemporary 
thought (or perhaps we should say sentiment) than any other 
writer of his time. . . . There were a faith and an ardor of 
conviction in him that distinguish him from most of the writers 
of his time. Nor were his practice and his preaching always 
inconsistent. He continued to pay regularly, whatever his own 
circumstances were, one hundred livres a year to a maternal 
aunt who had been kind to him in childhood.” And Hume 
wrote: “Though I see some tincture of extravagance in all 
his writings, I also think I see so much eloquence and force of 
imagination, such an energy of expression, and such a boldness 
of conception, as entitle him to a place among the first writers 
of his age.” Rousseau’s “Confessions,” especially, have been 
lauded in terms of superlative admiration by many of the fore¬ 
most and most staid literati of the world. 

Malevolent calumny on the part of the church interest, and, 
we are sorry to say, from the slanderous pen of Grimm also, his 
once Encyclopedic friend, can no longer hide the manifold 
excellencies, as they have so ably but meanly paraded the 
manifest defects of the life and character of Jean Jacques 
Rousseau. 

As long as the feeling of liberty dwells within the human 
breast —as long as the primeval pastoral life or later gipsy 
nature will, from time to time, crop out in our complex civiliza¬ 
tion—as long as unmistakable characters will be appreciated 
as wholesome rarities amid our dead-level and soulless conven¬ 
tionalities— so long will every truly philosophic vi itant, in 
body or in spirit, exclaim over that beautiful tomb at Erme- 
nonville, where Nature’s child leaned back in sweet and ever¬ 
lasting rest on the benignant bosom of his loving mother: — 
“Rousseau! ‘with all thy faults, I love thee still! ’ ” 


4 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


471 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


Frederick William, surnamed the Great, was the son of 
Frederick William I., King of Prussia, and Sophia Dorothea, the 
daughter of George I. of England. He was born at Berlin on 
the twenty-fourth of January, 1712. Nature gave him a strong 
and acute intellect, a rare firmness of temper and intensity of 
will. His early training was extremely rough and rigid. Few 
youths, perhaps, were ever subjected to a severer discipline or 
to greater hardships. 

Macaulay says: “Oliver Twist, in the parish workhouse, 
Smike at Dotheboy’s Ball, were petted c'uildren when com¬ 
pared with this wretched lieir-apparent of a crown.” 

His royal father was a rough, bearish, hot-tempered sort of 
man, always either mad or drunk. He does not seem to have 
had any ideas save those prompted by avarice and the desire 
of having a large army of strapping grenadiers. It would be 
occupying too much space in a sketch brief as this must neces¬ 
sarily be, to even enumerate the interesting episodes of his boy¬ 
hood and youth — such as his extraordinary parent’s attempt to 
have him put to death for leaving the army, and his forced 
marriage with Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick, a lady for 
whom he had not the slightest attachment. 

All the education that was allotted to young Frederick was 
that which a drill-sergeant could impart. But he had the good 
fortune to meet with a French lady who took upon herself the 
hazardous task of secretly teaching him her language. Abomina¬ 
ting the barbarous German, he henceforth pursued his studies 
in French. Terrible, indeed, would have been the vengeance of 
his mad father had he discovered his son’s linguistic acquire¬ 
ments. In after times it was said that Freder.ck had hardly 
retained enough of his native tongue to be “able to swear at 
iiis grenadiers.” 

Upon the death of his father in 1740, he became king. It 
wdl uol be expected in this short account to trace the political 


472 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


and military career of the great Frederick, nor the extraordi¬ 
nary steps by which he raised, against the most crushing oppo¬ 
sition, his little fifth-rate, patrimonial Prussia into one of the 
proudest positions among the powers of Europe. Previous to 
his accession to the throne he had clandestinely maintained an 
intercourse with many men of letters, especially Frenchmen. 
Notwithstanding he was pretty constantly at war the first 
twenty-four years of his life, he continued to pursue his liter¬ 
ary, scientific, and anti-theological studies and correspondence. 
He kept up communication with such skeptical savants as Fon- 
tenelle, Maupertius, and Furtenelle. 

During the life of his father he had written to Voltaire and 
expressed his admiration of the great genius which was then 
dazzling Europe. This resulted in the closest intimacy between 
the prince and the poet. After Frederick became king he 
invited the illustrious Infidel to visit him at Berlin. Voltaire, 
however, declined availing himself of the invi ation at that 
time; but three years later he was induced to accept a mission 
from his government to the court of Frederick for the purpose 
of securing an alliance between France and Prussia, in which 
he was successful. 

In July, 1750, he again went to Berlin in compliance with a 
recently-renewed ana cordial invitation. He was received by 
his royal host with the most flattering demonstrations of joy. 
Frederick sent him a thousand louis-d’or for the expenses of 
his journey, assigned him splendid apartments under the royal 
roof, and allowed him a pension of twenty thousand francs. 
They studied together and wrote verses two hours every day. 

The great Frederick, the conqueror of Silesia, had a weak¬ 
ness. It was a strong belief in his poetic genius. He wrote 
verses, which Voltaire was to criticise and correct — a delicate 
and hazardous task for one so fastidious and irritable as Vol¬ 
taire. As might have been expected, their literary life together 
was destined to be of short duration. After a stay of about 
three years, the poet parted from the king in a passion. Even 
during the most gloomy and desperate crisis of the famous 
Seven Years’ War in which he had to struggle against the 
united armies of Europe, Frederick’s passion for writing verses 
did not forsake him. “We hardly know,” says Macaulay, “ any 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


47& 


instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so 
striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, 
vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, bearing up against a 
world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a. 
quire of bad verses in the other.” 

Frederick died, without issue, at his palace at Sans-Souci, on 
the seventeenth of August, 1786, and was succeeded by his 
nephew, Frederick William II. He was a liberal patron and 
eicourager of commerce, manufactures, and the fine arts. He 
rei aired the ruinous state to which war reduced the countries, 
under his sovereignty with diligence and liberality. Every 
form of religion and irreligion was tolerated by him. When 
the infamous Jesuits were suppressed by a bull of the Pope, 
and driven from every Catholic country in Europe, Frederick 
gave them an asylum in his newly acquired Silesia. He used 
to speak of them as his “tame leopards.” Though the greatest 
portion of his life was passed in camp and upon the battle¬ 
field he left many and various works, the result of his liter¬ 
ary labors. In 1790 these were published in twenty-three vol¬ 
umes. His poems “ On the Art of War,” “ History of My Time,’ 
and “History of the Seven Years’ War,” are reckoned among 
his best productions. 

Macaulay thus observes of his voluminous “Memoirs”:: 
“The narrative is distinguished by clearness, conciseness, good 
sense, and a certain air of truth and simplicity, which is singu¬ 
larly graceful in a man who, having done great things, sits- 
down to relate them.” 

Place can here be given for only the following extracts from 
Frederick’s many and interesting literary productions. It occurs 
in a small book, entitled “Royal Mornings,” the subject being 
“ Religion ”: 

“The great point is, to be useful to the whole of mankind, 
by rendering all men brothers; and by making it a law to> 
them, to live together as friends and relations, by inculcating 
to them the absolute necessity of living and of dying in com- 
mufual peace and concord, and to seek their whole happiness 
in the social virtues. When these maxims shall have once 
taken root in the rising generation, the fruit of it will be the 
world’s forming itself into a numerous family, and the so much. 


474 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


celebrated Golden Age will not come np to that state of felicity 
which I ardently wish to mankind, and which it will then enjoy 
without adulteration. Now, pray mark what I am doing for 
this purpose; I use my best endeavors, for that all the writings 
in my kingdom on religion, should breathe the strongest spirit 
of contempt for all the reformers that ever were, and I never 
let slip any the least occasion of unmasking the ambitious 
views of the Court of Rome, of its priests and ministers. Thus, 
little by little, I shall accustom my subjects to think as I do, 
and shall detach them from all prejudices. . . . There is an 
army of prelates and priests constantly assembled, who are for¬ 
ever imposing on the populace, which has neither the capacity 
nor the time to reflect. Thence it comes to pass that in those 
countries that swarm with priests, the people are more unhappy 
and more ignorant than in other countries. The priests are 
like soldiers, who do mischief habitually and for amusement. 
These are already prepared with fifty consequences for every 
object of dispute, and, at least, thirty reflect'ons on each arti¬ 
cle of the Holy Scriptures. Rousseau is even actually taken up 
with furnishing proof, that everything, at present, preached from 
thence, is but a fable; that there never was a terrestrial para¬ 
dise; and that it is degrading God to believe that he made 
after his own image, a mere idiot, and his most perfect crea¬ 
ture, a rank, lewd jade; ‘for, in short/ adds he, ‘nothing but 
the length of the serpent’s tail would have seduced Eve; and in 
that case it proves there must have been a horrid disorder of 
her imagination.’” 

Frederick thus discourses to his nephew and heir presumptive 
concerning the duties of the sovereign in matters of religion: 
“Religion is absolutely necessary in a State. This is a maxim 
which it would be madness to dispute. And a king must know 
very little of po itics, indeed, that should suffer his subjects to 
make a bad use of it. But then it would not be very wise in a 
king to have any religion himself. Mark well, my dear nephew, 
what I here say to you; there is nothing that tyrannizes more 
over the head and heart than religion; because it neither 
agrees with our passions, nor with those great political views 
which a monarch ought to have. The true religion of a prince 
is his interest and glory. He ought, by his royal station, to be 


FREDERICK THE GREAT. 


475 


dispensed from having any other. He may, indeed, preserve 
outwardly a fair occasional appearance, for the sake of amusing 
those who are about him, or who watch his motives and char¬ 
acter.Let it be your rule of government 

that men are to worship the Divinity in their own way; for 
should you appear in the least neglectful of this indulgence, all 
would be lost and undone in your dominions. We should make 
ourselves indifferent to all these religions, for the sake of main¬ 
taining tranquility in our dominions.” Thomas Carlyle thus 
delineates the chief moral features of the character of the 
Great Frederick; “We will here advise our readers to prepare 
for dismissing altogether that notion of Frederick’s duplicity, 
mendacity, finesse, and the like, which was once widely current 
in the world; and to attend always strictly to what Frederick 
is saying, if they wish to guess what he is thinking; there 
being no such thing as ‘mendacity’ discoverable in Frederick, 
when you take the trouble to inform yourself. ‘Mendacity,’ 
my friends? How busy the owls have been with Frederick’s 
memory in different countries of the world; perhaps even more 
than this sad event is in such cases; for indeed he was apt to 
be of swift, abrupt proceedure, disregardful of owleries, and gave 
scope for misunderstanding in the course of his life. But a 
veracious man he w T as at all points, not even conscious of his 
veracity; but he had it in the blood of him, and never looked 
upon ‘ mendacity ’ but from a very great height indeed. He does 
not, except where suitable, at least, he never should, express 
his whole meaning. Keticence, not dissimulation. And, as to 
finesse, do not believe that either, in the vulgar or bad sense. 
Truly you will find that his ‘ finesse ’ is a very fine thing: and 
that it consists, not in deceiving other people, but in being right 
himself; in w T ell discerning for his own behoof what the facts 
before him are; and in steering, which he does steadily, in a 
most vigilant, nimble, decisive, intrepid manner by monition of 
the same. No salvation, but in the facts. Facts are a kind of 
divine thing to Frederick; much more so than to common men; 
this is essentially what religion we have found in Frederick. 
And, let me assure you, it is an invaluable element in any man’s 
religion, and highly indispensable, though so often dispensed 
with.” 


476 


helvetius.. 


TIELVETTUS. 

Claude Arian Helvetius was bom in Paris in the year 1715. 
He was sent to the College of Louis le Grand to be educated. 
He had for his tutor the famous Porce, who perceiving in Hel¬ 
vetius great talent and genius bestowed upon him additional 
attention. Early in life he formed the friendship of some of 
the leading minds in France, Montesquieu being his intimate* 
friend. When he was at the age of twenty-three Volraire 
sought his correspondence, calling him his “young Apollo, 
and his “Son of Parnassus.” 

The first literary productions of Helvetius consisted of poetry, 
and received Voltaire’s lavish commendations. Previous to the 
pub ication of his great work, “De L’Esprit,” he enjoyed the 
favor of the Court, and held the office of “ Matre d’ Hotel to 
the Queen.” He was removed from this office upon the appear¬ 
ance of his book, which brought upon him much persecution. 
This led Voltaire to write: 

“ It is a little extraordinary that they should have perse¬ 
cuted, disgraced, and harrassed, a much respected philosopher 
of our days, the innocent, the good Helvetius, for having said 
that if men had been without hands they could not have built 
houses, or worked in tapestry. Apparently those who have 
condemned this proposition have a secret for cutting stones 
and wood, and for sewing with the feet. I have no doubt they 
will soon condemn to the galleys the first who shall have the 
insolence to say that a man cannot think without his head; 
for, some bachelor will tell him, the soul is a pure spirit, the 
head is nothing but matter; God can place the soul in the 
nails as well as in the skull, therefore I prescribe you as 
impious.” 

There was such a persecution raised against Helvetius at 
this time that he deemed it best to withdraw to England, which 
he did in 1764. He visited Prussia the next year, being received 
by the great Frederick with every testimonial of esteem and 


HELYETIUS. 


477 


distinction. He was accorded, among other honors, that of 
lodging in the king’s own palace. Voltaire endeavored to per¬ 
suade him to relinquish all thoughts of returning to France. 
“In your place,” writes he, “I should not hesitate a moment 
to sell all that I have in France; there are some excellent 
estates in my neighborhood, and there you might cultivate in 
peace the arts you love.” 

About this time Hume formed the acquaintance of Helvetius, 
whom he mentions in a letter to Dr. Robertson as “a very 
line genius and worthy man.” Helvetius returned to his 
estate at Vore in 3765. He died from an attack of gout in the 
Read and stomach in December 1771. He was a philanthropist, 
a man of fine and sympathetic nature, who made all the duties 
of his life consist in doing good. The following selection will 
/suffice to indicate his literary merit: 

“Do you not know that Galileo was unworthily dragged to 
the prison of the Inquisition, for having maintained that the 
sun is placed in the center, and does not move around the 
earth; that his system first offended the weak, and appeared 
directly contrary to the text of Scripture — ‘ Sun, stand thou 
still ?’ However, able divines have since made Galileo’s prin¬ 
ciples agree with those of religion. Who has told you, that a 
divine more happy or more enlightened than you, will not 
remove the contradiction, which you think you perceive 
between your religion, and the opinion you resolve to con¬ 
demn ? Who forces you by a precipitate censure to expose, if 
not religion, at least its ministers, to the hatred excited by per¬ 
secution ? Why, always borrowing the assistance of force and 
terror, would you impose silence on men of genius, and deprive 
mankind of the useful knowledge they are ca able of dispens¬ 
ing? You obey, you say, the dictates of religion. Bu i com¬ 
mands you to distrust yourselves, and to love your n igabor. 
If you do not act in conformity to these principles, you are 
"then not actuated by the spirit of God. But you say, by . -m 
then are we inspired ? By laziness and pride. It is his az - 
ness and this pride which render them the persecu ors of rn n 
of learning; and which in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, have 
forged chains, built gibbets, and held the torch to the piles 
;of the Inquisition.” 


478 


BUFFON. 


BUFFON. 

No literary reputation was perhaps ever more rapidly or 
more widely established than that of Buffon. And this distinc¬ 
tion was well earned. He was a hard and efficient worker in 
his particular province of thought, and well deserves the title 
of “Illustrious.” 

The baptismal name of Count Buffon, the famous French 
naturalist, was George Louis Le Clerc. He was the son of a 
counselor of Parliament, and born at Montbard in 1707. He 
was early educated for the law, but his predilection for scien¬ 
tific pursuits led him to abandon his father’s profession. He 
next took up the study of astronomy and geometry, which 
proved to be more congenial to his taste. At the age of twenty 
he made the tour of Italy and England in company with Lord 
Kingston. In 1735 he brought out a translation of one of 
Newton’s works. He submitted to the test of experiment the 
practicability of Archimedes having set fire to the Boman fleet 
by burning mirrors, and succeeded in igniting wood at the 
distance of two hundred French feet. He was admitted to the 
Academy of Sciences in 1739, and appointed Superintendent of 
the Royal Garden and Cabinet of Natural History. He thence¬ 
forth devoted himself as “the high priest and interpreter of 
Nature.” In 1749 he published the first of his great works, 
“Natural History,” which was not completed till 1767, when it 
amounted to thirty-one volumes, 12 mo. He afterwards added 
several volumes by way of supplement. In 1771 appeared his 
“History of Birds,” comprising eight volumes. Between 1783 
and 1785 he issued five volumes on the “History of Minerals.” 
His “Epochs of Nature,” contained in the Supplement to his 
“Natural History,” is considered one of his greatest productions. 

In his “Eulogy on Buffon,” Condorcet remarks: “ M. de 
Buffon is poetical in his descriptions; but like all great poets, 
he knows how to render interesting the delineations of natural 
objects by blending with them moral ideas which affect the soul. 


BUFFON. 


m 


at the same time that the imagination is amused or astonished.’* 
His style was brilliant and eloquent, and his writings frequently 
betray the most poetical and luxurious imagination. When 
asked how he had found time to do so much, he replied, “Have 
I not spent fifty years at my desk ? ” 

He married in 1762. He had one son, who fell under the 
guillotine in the beginning of the French Eevolution. Buffon 
received the title of Count from the King of France in 1776. 
He died in Paris on the 16th of April, 1788. He is said to have 
been a man of a noble countenance and commanding figure, 
and one who bore the impress of high intelligence. He was 
extremely particular in his dress and demeanor, his fondness 
for magnificence, it is said, amounting to a passion. 

His works are esteemed the most important contributions 
ever made to the philosophy of natural history. His discoveries 
prepared the way for the labors of Camper, Blumenbach, and 
Cuvier. He was the first to recognize the law of the geography 
ical distribution of animals depending on climate and other 
physical conditions. He also discovered that the test of a 
species consists in fecundity, or power to propagate itself. He 
left a valuable work unfinished. 

Buffon possessed a comprehensive mind, inspired by an 
insatiable thirst for knowledge. His fondness for study was, 
his most distinguishing characteristic. He is said to have pos- 
sessed ‘‘that last infirmity of noble minds,” an anxious solici¬ 
tude for literary immortality, which in a man like him can 
only be considered a laudable vanity. 

His infidelity is apparent in his writings. He was in com¬ 
plete accord and confidence with the most famous French 
Freethinkers of his age. He did not make any direct assault 
upon Christianity, for all the energies of his life and peerless 
intellect were consecrated to science, the mistress of his soul. 
It is even a fact, and one extremely damaging to the Christian 
Church, that in all its eighteen hundred years of history it can 
justly name no man that ranks with Buffon; while the mere 
addition of such imperishable names as his to the muster-roll 
of Infidels, is enough to glorify the cause they represent. 


180 


CONDILLAC. 


CONDILLAC. 


Etienne De Condillac was born at Grenoble, France, in 1715, 
and was destined to become an eminent metaphysician. In his 
youth he w r as intimate with Diderot and Eousseau; but this 
friendship ceased or declined in his mature years. His life was 
passed mainly in study, and was as uneventful as such lives 
usually are. In 1746 appeared his first work, an “Essay on the 
Origin of Human Knowledge,” in which he advanced new and 
ingenious ideas. In 1749 he brought out his “Treatise on 
Systems.” The former was designed to advance the opinions of 
Eocke, and the latter to oppose the abstract theories of Leib- 
ni z and Spinoza, as being opposed to ideas received from expe¬ 
rience. In 1754 appeared his “Treatise on Sensations,” a lumin¬ 
ous and admirable work which made his name famous through¬ 
out Europe. This third work is considered his masterpiece, and 
in it his philosophical system is fully unfolded. Soon after this 
he was chosen tutor to the Duke of Parma, for whose use he 
composed and published his “Course of Studies,” which he 

I 

-divides into the arts of writing, reasoning, and thinking, fol¬ 
lowed by a general history of men and empires. After finishing 
the education of his royal pupil, he resigned himself once more 
to philosophical meditations, in which he passed the remainder 
of his days. He w^as admitted into the French Academy in 1768; 
but once elected a member, he never after attended any of its 
sessions. In his old age he published his “ Logic,” and left 
behind him his “ Langue des Calculs .” He died in 1780. His 
moral character was virtuous and discreet. However ingenious 
Condillac may be, he is to be considered neither a faithful nor 
<a profound expounder of the views of Locke, though he is 
the acknowledged representative of Locke in France. His 
system may be characterized as one of nearly absolute sensa¬ 
tion, whilst that of Locke unites sensation with reflection. One 
of his Christian critics says he “may be regarded as the 
immediate author of that shallow Materialism, which was 


CONDILLAC, 


481 


regarded as philosophy, immediately before the French Devolu¬ 
tion, and which produced the Atheism which characterized the 
greater number of the actors in that terrible drama.” Of 
course! He has been much praised by some for his discov¬ 
eries (?) in relation to the progress and influence of language. 
According to him, man owes the development of his faculties to 
the use of signs, and we are able to reflect only because we are 
able to speak. Even science is only a well-constructed language. 

In his first work, “he was a modest Lockeist, and laid down 
as the fundamental principle, that sensations and the operations 
of the mind are the material of our knowledge —materials 
which reflection sets in action by seeking their combinations 
and relations.” But in his third he quits Locke’s principle for 
that of Gassendi and Hobbes. He referred the origin of knowl¬ 
edge to one source only — Sensation. He was the pioneer of 
the simple “ Sensational School .” He wrote:— “Locke distin¬ 
guished two sources of ideas, sense and reflection. It would be 
more exact to recognize but one; first, because reflection is, in 
its principle, nothing but sensation itself; secondly, because it 
is less a source of ideas than a canal through which they flow 
from sense.” And further:— “Judgment, reflection, the pas¬ 
sions, in a word, all the faculties of the mind, are nothing but 
sensation ivhich transforms itself differently .” 

“ Condillac was clear, but much of his clearness was owing 
to his shallowness; much of his simplicity was owing to 
meagreness. He tried to construct Psychology upon no firmer 
"basis than that adopted by the metaphysicians whom he 
opposed. . . . He had no true psychological method, and 
could find no desirable system. The idea of connecting Psy¬ 
chology with Biology had not yet been distinctly conceived. 
Although the brain was universally held to be the * organ ’ of 
the mind, the mind was, by the strangest of oversights, not 
regarded as the function of that organ; consequently no one 
thought of connecting the study of the mind with the study of 
the nervous system; no one thought of a physiological basis as 
indispensable to psychological science.” Hartley, Erasmus Dar¬ 
win, Cabanis, and Gall had not yet physiologized psychology. 


482 


D’ALEMBERT, 


D’ALEMBERT. 

In the year 1717, there was found exposed in one of the 
streets of Paris, near the church of Le Bond, a little helpless 
infant. He was discovered by the overseer of the district, who 
gave him in charge of a glazier’s wife. He turned out to be an 
“illegitimate” son of a commissary of artillery, and, Madame 
de Tencin, an authoress. His father hearing of his abandon¬ 
ment by his mother, came forth and claimed him, charging 
himself with his maintenance and education. It is said that 
after his remarkable talents became known, his mother discov¬ 
ered herself to him, but he replied: “I know but one mother — 
the glazier’s wife.” But this foster-mother of his, who seems, 
to have always conducted herself very affectionately towards 
him, defined him to be “a fool who plagues himself all his. 
life, that he may be spoken of afier his death.” 

He was educated in the College Mazarin, which he entered in 
1730. He then engaged in the study of mathematics, in which 
he made a surprising progress. On leaving the College, he 
w ? ent to live with his foster-mother, with whom he resided 
forty years, contented with an annuity of 1,200 francs, which 
had been settled upon him by his parents. His friends advised 
him to endeavor to better his condition by studying the law, in 
which he subsequently took his degrees, but soon quitted the 
profession, in order to apply himself to the more congenial 
study of the physical sciences. Whatever progress he may have 
made in these, however, he abandoned them for mathematics. 
Having written a “Memoir on the Integral Calculus,” he was 
elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1741. Two years after 
this event, he produced his celebrated “Treatise on Dynamics,” 
containing an important principle which will always be known 
by the name of D’Alembert, and which initiated a revolution 
in physico-mathematical sciences, “ The principle in question 
amounts simply to this, that every force applied to a system 
must produce its entire effect somewhere, if not at the point of 
application, then somewhere else. In other words, there is an. 


D’ALEMBERT. 


483 


absolute equality at all times between the entire amount of force 
applied and the sum total of the effects produced; thus, one por¬ 
tion of the force may be spent in neutralizing an antagonistic 
force, — for example, in overcoming the momentum which a 
body may have already acquired; another portion, in overcom¬ 
ing the resistance caused by friction; a third, in imparting 
motion in a new direction. In 1746 he obtained the prize medal 
from the Academy of Berlin for a discourse on the theory of 
winds. In 1749 he solved the problem of the precession of the 
equinoxes, ascertained its quantity, and explained the rotation 
of the terrestrial axis. In 1752 he published an essay on the 
resistance of fluids. In the same year he declined the invita¬ 
tion of Frederick II. of Prussia, who offered him the Presi¬ 
dency of the Royal Academy with a liberal pension, but he 
accepted an unconditonal pension of 1,200 francs from that 
monarch two years later. From this time until his death a 
constant epistolary correspondence was maintained between him 
and Frederick. In 1754 he was elected to the French Academy. 
In 1756 he obtained a pension of 1,200 francs from Louis XY. 

He next engaged with Diderot in compiling the celebrated 
“ Encyclopedic,” for which he wrote the preliminary discourse, 
which was so excellent, that it drew from Condorcet the compli¬ 
ment that in a century only two or three men appeared capable 
of writing such. It was generally commended a§> a model of 
accurate thinking and elegant composition. He declined, in 
1672, an urgent invitation from Catherine II. of Russia to come 
to her Court and direct the education of her son, for a salary 
of 100,000 francs. In one of her letters, again pressing him to 
come, she says: “I know that your refusal springs from your 
desire to pursue your studies and cultivate your friendships in 
peace. Bring all your friends with you, and you and they shall 
have all the accommodation that is in my power.” In 1764 he 
became attached to the accomplished Mademoiselle de 1’ Espin- 
asse, who lived with him twelve years, but rendered him 
unhappy by her growing indifference to him and her partiality 
to another. For many years he was on terms of great intimacy 
with Voltaire, to whom he was as superior in taste and judg¬ 
ment as he was inferior in wit and brilliancy. D Alembert was 
a skeptic in the true sense of the word, (i. e., a “doubter” or 


484 


D ’A L E M B E Ii T. 


“inquirer,”) but not a scoffer; although he did not conceal his 
manly hostility to the Christianity of his country. But he was 
generous enough to praise genius and goodness everywhere, 
as witness his encomiums of Massillon, Fleury, Fenelon, Bos- 
suet, and Flechier. In 1765 he published his dissertation on 
the destruction of the Jesuits. In 1772 he was elected secretary 
to the French Academy, and wrote biographical “Eloges” ot ! 
the members of that institution (seventy in all) who died 
between 1700 and 1772. He also published several volumes of 
memoirs and miscellaneous pieces, among which are “Elements 
of Music;” “Researches on Various Important Points of the 
System of the Universe;” “Melanges of Literature and Philos¬ 
ophy,’ and ‘ Elements of Philosophy.” He was also a member 
of all the prominent literary societies of Europe. He died in 
Paris, Oct. 29, 1783, at the age of 66. 

Lacroix, in the “Biographie Universelle,” expresses the 
opinion that “D’Alembert should be ranked as high as any 
contemporary geometer, when we consider the difficulties he 
overcame, the intrinsic value of the methods which he inven ed 
and the ingenuity of his ideas. . . . His literary works, 
constantly directed to the perfection of reason and the propa¬ 
gation of correct ideas, were highly appreciated by all men of 
sense. All of them are remarkable for a pure diction, a neat 
style, and strong or pithy thought.” And even the Catholic 
Bishop of Limoges said, during D’Alembert's life time: “I do 
not know him personally, but I have always heard that his 
manners are simple, and his conduct without a stain. As to 
his works I read them over and over again, and I find noihing 
there except plenty of talent, great information, and a good 
system of morals. If his opinions are not as sound as his 
writings, he is to be pitied, but no one has a right to interro¬ 
gate his conscience.” Unfortunately for the good bishop, but 
fortunately for Freethought all over the world, D’Alembert’s 
“opinions” on Christianity and cognate subjects were made 
public after his death, in his “Private Correspondence with 
Voltaire and others.” His moral character was high-toned, 
presenting many very amiable traits, such as modesty, benefi¬ 
cence, candor, and an abiding sense of honor and responsibility. 


D’HOLBACH. 


485 


D’HOLBACH. 

Paul Thyry, Baron D’Holbach, was born at Heidesheim, in 
the Palatinate, in the month of January, 1723. His father 
being a man of fortune, was enabled to secure his studious son 
all the advantages of a thorough and liberal education. Having 
take i his son to Paris while he was still a child, for the pur¬ 
pose of superintending his intellectual culture under the ablest 
masters of the age, the father soon sickened and died, leaving 
the young student provided with an ample inheritance. Young 
D’Holbach ere long became noted for his remarkable talent 
and his tireless application to study. He devoted himself 
especially to the study of chemistry and mineralogy, in which 
he became distinguished. He passed the rest of his life in 
Paris. 

While yet very young he married, but in less than a year 
his wife died. Afterwards obtaining a dispensation from the 
Pope, he married his deceased wife’s sister, by whom he had 
four children, two sons and two daughters. He was an intimate 
associate and patron of the celebrated Encyclopedists. His 
affluence and position enabled him to gather the elite of Paris 
around his table. Diderot, Helvetius, Grimm, Rousseau, and 
many of the most distinguished men in the literary world, 
regularly assembled at his Sunday entertainments. For more 
than forty years there met at the table of the hospitable and 
generous D’Holbach the most advanced thinkers of the age, 
men renowned for their genius, wit and wisdom. A rare 
society it was, even in the great and brilliant French capital. 
What a chapter in the history of Freethought would be a 
minute report of those weekly gatherings, diversified as they 
were by the sparkling wit of Diderot, the good hum >r of the 
genial host, the occasional bitterness of Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
the cautious conversation of D’Alembert, the agreeable vivacity 
of Montesquieu, and the fresh and youthful enthusiasm of the 
earnest Naigeon! 


4SG 


D’HOLBACH. 


D’Holbach was an amiable man of the world, fond of 
amusement and social entertainment. Very few men of his time 
were so well versed in mathematics, chemistry, botany, or in 
Eoman and Grecian literature. He was generous to every one. 
He used to say, “I do not wish to be repaid my money; but 1 
am pleased when I meet with some little gratitude, if it be only 
as proving th t the persons I have assisted were such sort c* 
men as I desired.” The following description of his person has 
been extracted from Grimm’s “ Correspondence”: 

“D’Holbach’s features were, taken separately, regular, and 
even handsome, yet he was not a handsome man. His forehead, 
large and open, like that of Diderot, indicated a vast and capa¬ 
cious mind; but his forehead having fewer sinuosities, less 
roundness than Diderot’s, announced less warmth, less energy, 
and less fecundity of ideas. A craniologist would say that in 
both D’Holbach and Diderot, the philosophical organs were 
largely developed, but that Diderot excelled in ideality; D’Hol¬ 
bach’s countenance only indicated mildness, and the habitual 
sincerity of his mind. He was incapable of personal hatred. 
Though he detested priests and Jesuits, and all other supporters 
of despotism and superstition; ancl though when speaking of 
such people his mildness and good temper were sometimes 
transformed into bitterness and irritability; yet it is affirmed 
that when the Jesuits were expelled from France, D’Holbach 
regarded them as objects of commiseration and of pity, and 
afforded them pecuniary assistance.” 

D’Holbach was the author of about forty-five works, not 
one of which was published during his life-time in his own 
name. The manuscripts were taken to Amsterdam to be 
printed. D’Holbach and his friends kept the secret of his liter¬ 
ary productions while he lived. The government condemned 
and suppressed several of his books; but he lived unsuspected 
and unmolested. His most important work was the “System 
of Nature.” This was for many years attributed to Mirabaud, 
but it now appears that no one but D’Holbach had anything to 
do with its authorship. He also contributed largely to the first 
French Encyclopedia. 

The following extracts from this great production are here 
submitted to the consideration of the reader: “ Man always 


D’HOLBACH. 


487 


deceives himself when he abandons experience to follow imag¬ 
inary systems. He is the work of Nature. He exists in Nature. 
He is submitted to her laws. He cannot deliver himself from 
them. He cannot step beyond them even in thought. It is in 
Vain his mind would spring forward beyond the visible world; 
•an imperious necessity ever compels his return—-for a being 
formed by Nature, who is circumscribed by her laws, there 
exists nothing beyond the great whole ol" which he forms a 
part, of which he experiences the influence. The beings his 
imagination pictures as above Nature, or distinguished from 
her, are always chimeras formed after that which he has already 
seen, but of which it is utterly impossible he should ever form 
any correct idea, either as to the place they occupy, or their 
manner of acting —for him there is not, there can be nothing 
out of that Nature which includes all beings. Instead, therefore, 
of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings who can pro¬ 
cure him a happiness denied by Nature, let him study this 
Nature, learn her laws, contemplate her energies, observe the 
immutable rules by which she acts.” 

“ Propose to a man to change his religion for yours, he will 
believe you a madman; you will only excite his indignation, 
elicit his contempt; he will propose to you, in his turn, to 
adopt his own peculiar opinions; after much reasoning, you 
will treat each other as absur 1 beings, ridiculous y opinionated, 
pertinaciously stubborn; and he will display the least folly who 
shall first yield. But if the adversaries become heated in the 
dispute, which always happens, when they suppose the matter 
important, or w’hen they would defend the cause of their ovo 
Self-love, from thence their passions sharpen, they grow angry, 
quarrels are provoked, they hate each other, and end by recip¬ 
rocal injury. It is thus that for opinions, which no man can 
demonstrate, we see the Brahman despised; the Mohammedan 
hated; the Pagan held in contempt; that they oppress and dis¬ 
dain each with the most rancorous animosity. The Christian 
burns the Jew at what is called an Auto-da-fe, because he 
clings to the faith of his fathers; the Roman Catholic con¬ 
demns the Protestant to the flames, and makes a conscience of 
massacring him in cold blood; this reacts in his turn; some¬ 
times the various sects of Christians league together against the 


488 


D’HOL BACH. 


incredulous Turk, and for a moment suspend their own bloody - 
disputes that they may chastise the enemies to the true faith; 
then, having glutted their revenge, return with redoubled fury 
to wreak over again their infuriated vengeance on each other.”* 

Speaking of the theological delusions by which man has. 
been bewildered, he says: “His ignorance made him credulous; 
his curiosity made him swallow large draughts of the marvel¬ 
ous; time confirmed him in his opinions, and he passed his 
conjectures from race to race, for realities; a tyrannical power- 
maintained him in his notions, because by those alone could 
society be enslaved. It w&s in vain, that some faint glimmer¬ 
ings of Nature occasionally attempted the recall of his reason;. 
that slight coruscations of experience sometimes threw his 
darkness into light; the interest of the few was bottomed on. 
his enthusiasm; their preeminence depended on his love of 
the wonderful; their very ignorance rested on the solidity of 
his ignorance; they consequently suffered no opportunity to 
escape of smothering even the lambent flame. At length, the 
whole science of man became a confused mass of darkness, 
falsehood, and contradictions, with here and there a feeble ray 
of truth, furnished by that Nature of which he can never 
entirely divest himself, because, without his knowledge, his 
necessities are continually bringing him back to her resources.’ 

“After having lived a life of comfort, in affluent circum¬ 
stances, and surrounded by a large circle of the best men of 
ti e day, D’Holbach died on January the 21st, 1789, being then 
sixty-six years of age. The priests have never pictured to us 
any scene of horror in relation to his dying moments. The 
good old man died cheered and supported in his last struggle 
by those men whom he had many times assisted in the hard 
fighting of the battle of life. J. A. Naigeon, who had been 
his friend for thirty years, paid an eloquent tribute to D’Hol- 
bach’s memory; and we are not aware that any man has ever 
written anything against his personal character.” 


KANT. 


489> 


KANT. 

The founder of the Critical (popularly but incorrectly called 
the Transcendental) School of Philosophy in Germany was born 
at Konigsberg, in Prussia, in April. 1724. His father was a 
saddler; and is said to have been of Scottish extraction — a 
circumstance which, when taken in consideration with the 
great metaphysician’s connection with Hume, has some little 
interest. His parents were sternly good people. His father 
(whoso family name was spelt Cant —altered by the philosopher 
to Kant) was a man of tried integrity. His mother (also origin¬ 
ally Scotch, according to some biographers) was “somewhat 
severe, but upright, speaking the truth, and exacting it.” To 
the influence of their precepts, and the example of their severe 
and inflexible virtue, must be ascribed, in no small measure, his 
own inflexible principles — the pure moral character and that 
profound respect for moral obligation which he exhibited 
through the whole of his life. 

“ Madame de Stael has remarked, that there is scarcely 
another example, except in Grecian history, of a life so rigor¬ 
ously philosophical as that of Kant. He lived to a great age,, 
and never once quitted the snows of murky Konigsberg. There- 
he passed a calm and happy existence, meditating, professing, 
and writing. He had mastered all the sciences; he had studied 
languages, and cultivated literature. He lived and died a type 
of the German Professor: he rose, smoked, drank his coffee, 
wrote, lectured, took his daily walk always at precisely the 
same hour. The cathedral clock, it was said, was not more 
punctual in its movements than Immanuel Kant.” But he 
himself “mentions having once been kept two or three days 
from his promenade by reading Rousseau’s Emile , which had 
just appeared/' He never, in the whole course of his long life 
of eighty years, traveled above seven miles from his native city. 

Having gone through a course at the Gymnasium he entered 
the Universi: y at the age of sixteen. “ There he began and there 


KANT. 


490 

-he ended his career.” Here he commenced the study of theol¬ 
ogy, but soon abandoned it for the pursuit of mathematics, the 
natural sciences, and philosophy. The success with which he 
studied these subjects soon manifested itself in various publica¬ 
tions. His first work was “ Thoughts on the True Estimation 
of the Living Powers,” which more or less clearly foreshadowed 
his coming philosophy. About 1755 he began to lecture on 
logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. This year, also, 
he brought out a work entitled “Universal Natural History and 
Theory of the Heavens,” in which he certainly anticipated the 
-discovery of the planet Uranus, thus giving proof of his sagac¬ 
ity in questions of physical science. Indeed, he not only 
anticipated the discovery, but actually predicted the existence 
of the planet; and “Herschel himself, after discovering it, 
admitted Kant's having first announced it.” 

In 1762 he was offered the Professorship of Poetry in the 
University, but he conscientiously declined the position, on the 
ground that he had not the proper qualifications. He had 
already established his reputation as an original and profound 
thinker, when, at length, in 1770, he was appointed to the Chair 
of Logic and Metaphysics in the same University. On entering 
upon this professorship, he read a dissertation “On the Form 
■and Principles of the World of the Senses and that of the 
Understanding,” which contains the germs of the great philos¬ 
ophical system which he afterwards developed in his great 
work, the “Critique of Pure Keason,” first published in 1781. 
Among his various other works may be named “Theory of the 
Winds,” —“Sketch of Physical Geography,” — “New Principles 
of Motion and Pest,”—“Examination of the Prize Question, 
whether the Earth, in turning round its Axis, by which the 
Succession of Day and Night was produced, had undergone any 
change since its Origin ? what were the causes of it, and how 
we could be assured of it,” —“On Volcanoes in the Moon,”— 
“Observations upon the Sentiment of the Beautiful and Sub¬ 
lime,” (1764) —“Critique of Practical Reason,” that is, reason 
considered in its application lo our moral conduct, (1799) — 
4 ‘Critique on the Faculty of Judging,” (1793) —and an essay 
*‘On a Plan for an Everlasting Peace.” He died an octogen¬ 
arian, February 12, 1804. 


KAM T. 


491 


Although Kant’s writings, as we have perceived, embrace a 
great variety of subjects, his fame rests chiefly upon his achieve¬ 
ments as a metaphysician. Many think he has perhaps never 
been equalled as a deep and close thinker. One of his biog¬ 
raphers even calls him “ the most profound thinker with whom 
the history of the human mind has made us acquainted.” But 
however that may be, as a metaphysical philosopher he was 
certainly head and shoulders above all the thinkers of his gen¬ 
eration. In our short memoir we will not pretend to give even 
an outline of his system. This could only be rendered intelli¬ 
gible in a large treatise. Suffice it here to observe, that “ Kant’s 
great aim was to determine the laws and limits of the intellect 
of man, and thus to guard, on the one hand, against the arro¬ 
gant dogmatism of those who over-estimate, and on the other, 
against the absurd skepticism of those who under-estimate the 
powers of the human mind. . . . It is claimed by some of 

the admirers of Kant (indeed, he himself suggested the paral¬ 
lel), that he performed for mental philosophy a service similar 
to that which Copernicus performed for astronomy. As the 
latter may be said to have determined the relative importance, 
as well as the true position of the earth in the solar system, 
so the former has determined the proper limits and true posi¬ 
tion of the human intellect in relation to the objects of knowl¬ 
edge; and as Copernicus has demonstrated that many of the 
apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not real, but 
caused by the motion of the earth, v the standpoint of the 
observer,) so Kant has shown that many mental phenomena 
are to be explained, not by referring them, as most philoso¬ 
phers have done, to independent external causes, but to those 
•essential laws which regulate the movements of the mind 
itself.” His disciples were also fond of comparing him to New¬ 
ton; “for he had not only changed the whole science of Meta¬ 
physics, as Copernicus had changed the science of Astronomy, 
but had also consummated the science he originated.” 

Kant will always be best known, appreciated, and criticised 
by his “Critique of Pure Reason.” But the “Critique” itself 
did not attract notice at first. “ The novelty of its views, the 
repulsiveness of its terminology and style, for some time 
•obscured its real value. This value was at length discovered 


492 


KANT. 


and made known. All Germany rang with praises of the new 
philosophy. Almost every cnair was filled by a Kantist. Num¬ 
berless books, and not a few pamphlets, came rapidly from the 
press, either attacking or defending the principles of the Crit¬ 
ical Philosophy.’' 

“ Kant never spoke of his own system, and from his house 
the subject was entirely banished. He scarcely read any of the 
attacks on his works; he had enough of Philosophy in his 
study and lecture-room, and was glad to escape from it to the 
topics of the day." 

Kant was a natural skeptic. But we often hear it proclaimed 
with emphasis by the admirers of Swedenborg, that Kant testi¬ 
fied to the truth of the so-called “ Scandinavian seer ”’s clairvoy¬ 
ance He did nothing of the kind. In his “Letter on Sweden¬ 
borg ” he narrates two of the reported cases of Swedenborg’s 
clairvoyance , and says he knows not how to disprove them, 
they being supported by such respectable testimony; but he 
nowhere testifies to them himself; and in the Anthropologic,, his- 
energetic contempt for Swedenborgianism and all other Schwar- 
merei is unequivocally expressed. 

It is perfectly useless, as it is entirely false, to call Kant a 
dreamer, and his works transcendental nonsense or “ moon- 
shiny mysticism." Though Kantism may appear at first some¬ 
what obscure and repulsive, no sooner is its terminology com¬ 
prehended, than all obscurity disappears, and a system of 
philosophy is revealed, which for clean-cut clearness and intel¬ 
ligibility greatly surpasses many systems hitherto considered 
easy enough to be comprehended. His system is neither Spino- 
zism nor Skepticism, nor yet that of Common Sense. It is pre¬ 
eminently the Critical Philosophy. While men agreed that the 
source of all Knowledge was Experience, Kant asked himself:: 
“What is this Experience? What are the Elements?" 

“To the skeptic, Kant says: . . . ‘Experience is not a 
deceit; human understanding has its fixed laws, and those laws 
are true.’ To the Dogmatist he says: ‘But this understanding 
can never know things per se. It is occupied solely with its 
own ideas. It perceives only the Appearances of things. How 
would it be possible to know Noumena? By stripping them 
of the forms which our Sensibility and Understanding have 


KANT. 


493 


Impressed upon them (i. e., by making them cease to be Appear¬ 
ances). But to strip them of these forms, we must annihilate 
Consciousness —we must substitute for our Sensibility and Un¬ 
derstanding a faculty, or faculties, capable of perceiving Things 
per se. This, it is obvious, we cannot do. Our only means of 
communication with objects are precisely this Sensibility and 
this Understanding, which give to objects the forms under 
which we know them.” 

As some of the consequences of Kant’s Psychology, the fol¬ 
lowing may be mentioned: “ First Result—A knowledge of things 
per se (Dinge an sich) is impossible, so long as knowledge 
remains composed as at present; consequently Ontology, as a 
science, is impossible. . . . Second Result — The existence of 
an external world is a necessary postulate, but its existence is 
only logically affirmed. . . . Third Result — Our knowledge, 
though relative, is certain. . . . Fourth Result — The veracity 
of consciousness is established. Fifth Result — With the veracity 
of consciousness, is established the certainty of morals.” 

But, after all, “ the veracity of Consciousness, which he had 
so laboriously striven to establish, and on which his Practical 
Reason was based, is only a relative, subjective veracity. Expe¬ 
rience is the only basis of Knowledge; and Experience leads to 
Skepticism.” It is true Kant himself was not a skeptic; but 
he greatly deceived himself in supposing that his elaborate and 
magnificent system was any safeguard from skepticism. 


494 


HUTTON. 


HUTTON. 

James Hutton, the author of the Plutonic or Vulcaniao 
theory of Geology, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1726. 
He graduated as Doctor of Medicine at Leyden in 1749. About. 
1768 he became again a resident of Edinburgh, where he pub¬ 
lished, besides other works, a “Dissertation on the Philosophy 
of Light, Heat, and Fire,”. (1794,) and “Theory of the Earth,” 1 
(1795.) Both these works were the result of immense original 
observation and research. Towards the elaboration of his sys¬ 
tem of Geology, especially, he had recourse to exhaustive tours 
in Scotland and otherwhere. As against the Neptunian theory 
of Geology, which maintained that all the great changes in the 
crust of the earth, including perpendicular and inclined as well 
as horizontal stratification, were due solely to the action of 
water, mostly in the form of deluges, among which Noah’s 
deluge played a very conspicuous role, Hutton advanced his 
Eire theory to explain all, or by far the most of all geological 
phenomena. Since his time it has been well demonstrated that 
these changes were effected by both fire and water, in perhaps 
almost equal proportions. (See Art “Lyell.”) Hutton’s theory 
excited much discussion and very virulent opposition. Its chief 
assailant was Kirwan, and its chief defender Professor Playfair, 
who wrote “ Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth,” 
(1802). Hutton suffered a great deal socially on account of his 
uncompromising adherence to what he deemed the revelations 
of Geology as against the absurd fables of Genesis. But he 
stood it like a man and a philosopher. He defied the wTiole 
horde of*his persecutors up to his death in 1797 —a death which 
was doubtless materially hastened by the shafts of bigotry and 
unsparing ridicule. But this great martyr of science is now 
fast becoming appreciated and honored at his true worth. 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


495. 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

Few men, in whatever age they have lived, have been as 
fortunate in securing the respect, the approbation, and the love 
of their entire countrymen to the great extent that did George. 
Washington. As a patriot, as a general, and as a statesman he 
is first in the hearts of his people and stands, high in the esti¬ 
mation of the world 

He was born on the Potomac River, in Westmoreland 
County, Virginia, on the twenty-second day of February 1732. 
He was a son of Augustine Washington, a planter, and his wife, 
Mary Ball. His great grandfather, John Washington, emigrated 
from England in 1657. Augustine dying in 1743 left a large, 
estate in land to his widow and five children. George was ten 
years of age at his father’s death, and inherited a large farm 
on the Rappahannock River, near Fredericksburg. George 
attended several schools in the vicinity, but was never sent to. 
college and never studied the languages. His writing and copy¬ 
ing books are said to still be in existence and are models of neat¬ 
ness. Through his childhood and youth he was regarded as a, 
truthful, honorable boy. The celebrated “hatchet story” is. 
probably, however, a fancy sketch. Favored with superior phy¬ 
sical strength he excelled in athletic exercises and horseman¬ 
ship. His moral character was doubtless greatly moulded by 
the influence of his intelligent and high-minded mother. 

In the spring of 1748 he was employed by Lord Fairfax to 
survey a portion of his extensive landed possessions west of the 
Blue Ridge, and not then settled by white people. In this 
arduous avocation he passed nearly three years. At the age of 
nineteen he was appointed adjutant general (with the rank of 
major) of one of the districts into which Virginia was divided 
when hostilities broke out between the English and the French. 

In November 1753 he was sent by Governor Dinwiddie on a 
mission to the French commander and performed a perilous, 
journey of five hundred miles through the wilderness. He dis- 


496 


OEORGE WASHINGTON. 


played prudence, sagacity, resolution and fortitude in a marked 
degree, and which forshadowed the useful career which awaited 
him. Of that expedition Irving says: “it may be considered 
the foundation of his fortunes. From that moment he was the 
vising hope of Virginia.” 

In the hostilities which began in the spring of 1754 between 
the Virginians and the French, Lieutenant-Colonel Washington 
led a small force to the frontier. H> gained a victory at Great 
Meadows and was subsequently promoted to the rank of Colonel. 
He served as aid-de-camp to Gen. Braddock in his disastrous 
expedition against Fort Duquesne, which from great lack of 
judgment, and in opposition to the advice of Washington, 
proved a severe defeat. Four bullets passed through the coat 
of Washington, but he behaved with coolness and valor. 

In the summer of 1755 he was appointed Commander-in- 
Cnief of the forces (two thousand men) which the Assembly of 
Virginia ordered to be raised for the defense of the province. 
He commanded a part of the army under Gen. Forbes which 
took Fort Duquesne. 

In January 1759 he married Mrs. Martha Custis, widow 
of John Parke Custis. Upon this event he resigned his com¬ 
mission, retired from the service, and settled at Mount Vernon 
as a planter. In 1758 he was elected to the House of Bur¬ 
gesses, the speaker of which, on the first appearance of 
Washington in that bodv, tendered him a compliment for his 
military services. When Washington rose to reply he blushed 
.and stammered and trembled so he could hardly get out a 
word. “Sit down, Mr. Washington,” said the speaker, “Your 
modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of 
any language I possess.” 

W shington was wealthy before his marriage, but with his 
wife he added at least one hundied thousand dollars to his for¬ 
tune. By the purchase of adjacent plantations, he enlarged his 
Mount Vernon esta'e o eight thousand acres. He remained 
several years in the House of Burgesses. In 1773 he was a dele¬ 
gate to the convention which met at Williamsburg and asserted 
the right of the colonies to self-government, and with Patrick 
Henry and five others he was chosen by this convention to rep¬ 
resent Virginia in the Gen ra Congress which met at Philadel- 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


497 


phia in September, 1774. After the first session of this Congress 
Patrick Henry being asked whom he considered the greatest 
man in Congress, replied: “If you speak of solid information 
and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the 
greatest man on that floor.” 

In June, 1775 he was unanimously elected by the Continental 
Congress, Commander-in-Chief of all the forces. Before he 
could take command of the army, the Battle of Bunker Hill 
took place, June 17th, 1775. On the second of July he assumed 
command of the army at Cambridge, Mass., amounting to 
15,000 men, and engaged in the siege of Boston, occupied by 
11,000 British veteran troops. Washington found his army 
undisciplined and deficient in arms, ammunition, and other 
materials of war. The difficulty of his situation was increased 
by the fact that the Continental Congress was lacking in all the 
attributes of an efficient government, and was destitute of 
money and credit. On the seventeenth or eighteenth of March, 
1776, the British evacuated Boston, and escaped on their fleet to 
Halifax. Congress passed a vote of thanks to General Wash¬ 
ington for his faithful services and success upon this occasion. 

After this, Washington moved the army from Boston to New 
York, where he arrived in April, and awaited the approach of 
the enemy by sea, at that point. In the meantime the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence was signed by Congress, July 4th, 1776. 

The opposing forces next met at the battle of Long Island, 
where the British under General Howe were victorious, August 
20th. The Americans lost two thousand men and Washington 
was compelled to evacuate New York and retreat through New 
Jersey to the west side of the Delaware river. Daring this 
retreat his army was reduced to four thousand men, and the 
< ause of the colonists seemed desperate and gloomy. The 
British general failed to follow up his victory and make the 
most of it. Washington was re-inforced, and on the twenty-fifth 
of December, crossed the Delaware in open boats and attacked 
the enemy at Trenton and gained a victory, and took one thou¬ 
sand Hessian prisoners. On January 3d, 1777, he gained another 
victory at Princeton and took three hundred prisoners. These 
victories greatly revived the drooping courage of the country, 
and Washington was invested with almost dictatorial powers; 


498 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


but wi h whatever power was placed in his hands at any time 
during his career, he always had the integrity the honesty, and 
the great good sense to exercise it with moderation and for the 
general good. He did not seem to be governed by selfish, 
motives, nor with a desire to glorify himself any farther than 
he could do so in the path of duty and honor. 

In the summer of 1777 the British General Burgoyne moved 
from Canada with an army, and General Howe with another 
army of sixteen thousand men moved up the Chesapeake Bay 
to attack Philadelphia, the colonial seat of government. To. 
defend that city Washington interposed an army of eleven 
thousand men and encountered the enemy on the Brandywine 
on the eleventh of September, but owing to superior numbers he, 
was repulsed with a loss of nine hundred killed and wounded. 
In this battle the brave Marquis Lafayette, who came over 
with the French forces to assist the colonists, was wounded. 
A few days after this battle the British occupied Philadelphia. 
On October 4th an engagement took place at Germantown, six 
miles from Philadelphia, in which the Americans were unsuc¬ 
cessful and lost eight hundred killed and wounded. 

In the meantime important victories were gained in the 
North. On September 17, Gen. Stark gained a victory at Ben¬ 
nington ; and on Oct. 7, Gen. Gates fought a second battle at 
Stillwater, N. Y.. and signally defeated Burgoyne, who surren¬ 
dered at Saratoga his army of 6000 men. This victory was of 
great value and inspired the Americans with courage. 

In December, 1777, Washington went into winter quarters at 
Yalley Forge, Pa., where his illy-supplied army suffered greatly 
for want of food and clothing. Gen. Henry Clinton had suc¬ 
ceeded Gen. Howe in command of the British, and in June* 
1778, evacuated Philadelphia and moved across New Jersey 
towards New York. Washington pursued and attacked him at 
Monmouth with indifferent success, losing 69 killed and 160 
wounded. Congress extended a vote of thanks to Washington 
for his services on that occasion. 

After this date the British removed the contest in part to 
the Southern States. Georgia and South Carolina became 
battle grounds. Gen. Gates commanded the American forces in 
that locality, and suffered a serious defeat. 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


499 


The army of Washington passed the winter of 1779 and ’80 
at Morristown, N. J., and he was obliged from the weakness of 
his forces and the destitution of his army to remain on the 
defensive. The public treasury was so completely exhausted 
and the currency issued was so depreciated, that Washington 
experienced the greatest difficulty in obtaining food and cloth¬ 
ing for his soldiers. In July, 1780, a French fleet arrived at 
Newport, R. I., with 6000 men which the French government 
had sent to help the struggling Americans, and great assistance 
was expected from their aid; but about this time the treachery 
of Benedict Arnold, who commanded the fortress of West 
Point, came near being a most sad blow to the American cause. 

In August, 1780, Washington urged upon Congress the neces¬ 
sity of forming an army by drafting, and showed them that if 
that had been done earlier the advancement would have been 
greater and our disasters fewer. Gen. Gates was removed from 
the Southern command by Congress, and it authorized Wash¬ 
ington to appoint his successor. He sent Gen. Greene to take 
charge of 2,200 men at Charleston, S. C. The principal military 
operations of 1781 were in the Souihern States. A battle was 
fought at Cowpens, and another at Guilford, N. C., at which 
both sides sustained considerable loss. In April, 1781. Cornwal¬ 
lis, in commmand of the British army, moved north into Vir¬ 
ginia. Gen. Lafayette was sent with 3,000 men to oppose him, 
but no decided victories were gained on either side. Cornwallis 
made Yorktown his headquarters. Early in September a French 
fleet of twenty-eight ships arrived in the Chesapeake Bay, and 
about the same time Washington moved his forces southward, 
combining the French and the Americans, and on September 
28th, with an army of 15,000 men, commenced the siege of 
Yorktown. On the 19th of October Cornwallis surrendered his 
army of 7,000 men. This was the most important victory of the 
seven years’ war, and virtually established American independ¬ 
ence. During 1782 no vigorous military operations were con¬ 
ducted. September 3, 1783, a definite treaty of peace was signed 
at Paris by Franklin and others, in which the British govern¬ 
ment fully recognized the independence of the American Colo¬ 
nies; and thus the long struggle ended. Washington resigned 
his commission December 23, 1783, and retired to private life at 


500 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


Mount Yernon, followed by the gratitude, love and admiration 
of the entire country. 

The confederation, however, which had been adopted by the 
States was found to be impotent and inefficient. Washington 
saw this most plainly and advised a stronger system of govern¬ 
ment. To rescue the young nation from anarchy, a national 
convention was called, and met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, 
of which Washington was unanimously elected President. Afier 
a session of several months the convention adopted a new 
constitution which greatly increased the power of the Federal 
Government. Under this Constitution, Washington, without 
opposition, was elected President of the United States for four 
years from March 4, 1789. He appointed Thomas Jefferson 
Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton Secretary of the Treas¬ 
ury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; and Edmund Randolph 
Attorney-General. Washington had many difficulties to encoun¬ 
ter. The young nation was impoverished in finances and had 
not yet become accustomed to self-government; but the admin¬ 
istration of Washington was eminently wise and judicious. 
There is no question, had he been actuated by ambitious 
personal motives, that soon after the close of the war he could 
easily have been declared king of Americ i; and in fact t he 
plan was proposed to him, but he gave no countenance to it, 
and was solely actuated by a desire to faithfully serve liis 
fellow citizens without selfish objects and motives. In 1792 he 
was again unanimously elected President, and John Adams 
Vice-President. He resided at Philadelphia, which was then 
the seat of government. Complications arose between the two 
parties, Federalists and Democrats, wh.ch grew up in the 
country, and also connected with the foreign policy, touching 
France and England. There were those who denounced Wash¬ 
ington in harsh terms, but by his even handed course he retained 
the confidence of the mass of the people. Near the expiration 
of his second term there was a popular demand that he be 
elected for the third time, but he announced his determina ion 
to retire to private life. His “Farewell Address” appeared in 
September, 1796, and produced a profound impression. His 
counsel in favor of united action and freedom from foreign 
entangling alliances was most sound. In March, 1797, his public 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


501 


career closed and he retired to Mount Vernon, leaving the 
nation in a state of great prospe: ity. 

Washington, after a brief illness with acute laryngitis, died 
December 14th, 1799, nearly sixty-eight years of age. A few 
hours before his death, in contemplating his dissolution, he 
used these words: “ I look upon this event with perfect resig¬ 
nation.” 

In stature Washington was six feet two inches in height, 
with a frame well proportioned and firmly knit. His hair was 
brown, his eyes blue, and far apart. He had a powerful form 
and was very active and agile. In manner he was dignified, 
precise and uncommunicative. By some he was regarded as 
cold and aristocratic; but the strictest sense of honor and 
truth was his guiding star. 

Wisdom, judgment, prudence, discretion and veneration for 
truth and honor were his striking characteristics. He delib¬ 
erated slowly, but decided surely, and when his decision was 
once made he seldom had occasion to reverse it. Courage, phys¬ 
ical and moral, was a part of his nature. His biographer 
Sparks thus speaks of him: “His ambition was of that noble 
kind which aims to excel in whatever it undertakes, and to 
acquire a power over the hearts of men by promoting their 
happiness and winning their affections. Sensitive to the appro¬ 
bation of others and solicitous to deserve it, he made no con¬ 
cessions to gain their applause, either by flattering their 
vanity or yielding to their caprices. Cautious without timidity, 
bold without rashness, cool in counsel, deliberate, but firm in 
action, clear in foresight, patient under reverses, steady, per¬ 
severing and self-possessed, he met and conquered every obstacle 
that obstructed his path to honor, renown and success. More 
confident in the uprightness of his intentions than in his 
resources, he sought knowledge and advice from other men. 
He chose his counselors with unerring sagacity; and his quick 
perception of the soundness of an opinion, and of the strong 
points in an argument enabled him to draw to his aid the best 
fruits of their talents and the light of their collected wisdom. 

“His moral qualities were in perfect harmony with those of 
his intellect. Duty was the ruling principle of his conduct, and 
the rare endowments of his understanding were not more con- 


502 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


stantly tasked to devise the best methods of effecting an 
object, than they were to guard the sanctity of conscience. No 
instance can be adduced in which he was actuated by a sinis¬ 
ter motive, or endeavored to attain an end by unworthy means. 
Truth, integrity and justice were deeply rooted in his mind, and 
nothing could rouse his indignation so soon, or so utterly 
destroy his confidence as the discovery of the want of these vir¬ 
tues in any one whom he had trusted. Weaknesses, follies, 
indiscretions, he could forgive; but subterfuge and dishonesty 
he never forgot — rarely pardoned. He was candid and sincere, 
true to his friends and faithful to all, neither practicing dis¬ 
simulation, descending to artifice, nor holding out expectations 
which he did not intend should be realized. His passions were 
strong and sometimes they broke out with vehemence, but he 
had the power of checking them in an instant. Perhaps self- 
control was the most remarkable trait of his character. It was 
in part the effect of discipline; yet he seems by nature to have 
possessed this power in a degree which has been denied to 
other men. ..Charitable and humane, he was lib¬ 

eral to the poor, and kind to those in distress. As a husband, 
son and brother he was tender and affectionate; without vanity, 
ostentation, or pride, he never spoke of himself or his ac'ions, 
unless required by circumstances which concerned the public 
interests. As he was free from envy so he had the good for¬ 
tune to escape the envy of others by standing on an elevation 
which none could hope to attain. If he had one passion more 
strong than another, it was love of his country. The purity and 
ardor of his patriotism were commensurate with the greatness of 
its object. Love of country in him was invested with the 
sacred obligation of a duty; and from the faithful discharge of 
this duty he never swerved for a moment, either in thought 
or deed, through the whole period of his eventful career. 

“Such are some of the traits in the character of Washington 
which have acquired for him the love and veneration of man¬ 
kind. If they are not marked with the brilliancy, extrava¬ 
gance and eccentricity which in other men have excited the 
astonishment of the world, so neither are they tarnished by 
the follies nor disgraced by the crimes of those men. It is the 
happy combination of rare talents and qualities, the harmo- 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 


503 


nious union of the intellectual and moral powers, rather than 
the dazzling splendor of any one trait, which constitute the 
grandeur of his character. If the title of great man ought to 
be reserved for him, who cannot be charged with an indiscre¬ 
tion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independ¬ 
ence, the glory, and durable prosperity of Lis country, who, 
succeeding in all that he undertook, and whose successes were 
never won at the expense of honor, justice, integrity, or by the 
sacrifice of a single principle, this title will not be denied to 
Washington.” 

In religious belief Washington was a Deist, the same as were 
Franklin, Jefferson and Paine. Like them he believed in the 
existence of a Supreme Being, — in one God only, and not in 
the divinity of Jesus Christ, or any other man. He had but 
little to say upon religious subjects in his common intercourse 
with men, but his intimate friends were not kept in ignorance 
as to his unbelief in the cardinal dogmas of Christianity. He 
has been claimed, of course, as a Christian saint, and the 
churches insist that he is one of their number, and the story 
of his retiring into the bushes before a battle to pray for suc¬ 
cess to attend the approaching conflict is a very agreeable 
Christian tale, and is perhaps a fit companion-piece with the 
hatchet story of his boyhood. He doubtless retired more than 
once into the bushes, but as a man of sense and of a belief in 
the ope.ation of natural laws he had far more confidence in 
disciplined regiments, good arms and ammunition to gain a vic¬ 
tory than in appealing to an unseen power to bring about the 
destruction of opposing forces. 

Touching Washington’s religious views, Thomas Jefferson 
wrote as follows in his journal of 1800 [Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 
iv. p. C12]: “Dr. Rush told me he had it from Asa Green that 
when the clergy addressed General Washington on his depart¬ 
ure from the Government, it was observed in their consulta¬ 
tion that he had never on any occasion said a word to the pub¬ 
lic which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they 
thought they should so pen their address as to force him at 
length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. 
They did so. However, he observed, the old fox was too cun¬ 
ning for them. He answered every article of their address par- 


504 


GEORGE WASHINGTON 


ticularly, except that, which he passed over without notice* 
Rush ( bserves he never did say a word on the subject in any of 
his public papers, except in his Valedictory letters to the Gov¬ 
ernors of the States, when he resigned his commission in the 
army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian 
religion. I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in 
his secrets and believed himself to be so, has often told me 
that General Washington believed no more in that system 
than he himself did.” (And Gouverneur Morris was a well- 
known unbeliever and an intimate friend of Washington.) 

In the Albany “Daily Advertiser,” of October 29, 1831, was 
published a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Wilson of that city, in 
-which occurred the following paragraph: — 

“ Washington was a man of valor. He was esteemed by the 
whole world as a great and good man, but he was not a pro¬ 
fessor of religion, at least not till after he was President. 
When Congress sat in Philadelphia, President Washington 
attended the Episcopal church. The rector, Dr. Abercrom- 
b ; e, has told me that on the days when the sacrament of the- 
Lord’s Supper was to be administered, Washington’s custom 
was to rise just before the ceremony commenced and to walk 
out of the church. This became a subject of remark in the 
congregation, as setting a bad example. At length the Doctor 
undertook to speak of it, with a direct allusion to the President. 
Washington was heard afterward to remark that this was the 
first time a clergyman had thus preached to him, and that he 
would henceforth neither trouble the Doctor nor his congrega¬ 
tion on such occasions. And ever, after that, upon commun¬ 
ion days he absented himself from the church.” 

The following reference to the sermon is from the pen of 
Robert Dale Owen, and is copied from the appendix to the- 
Discussion between Bachelor and Owen (p. 367.) which took 
place nearly forty years ago 

“ As this important paragraph, being only from a newspaper- 
report, could hardly be considered authentic, I myself called* 
accompanied by a gentleman of this city, on Dr. Wilson this- 
afternoon. After giving my name and stating the object of my 
visit, I read to the Doctor at his request the above paragraph. 
When I had completed, he said: ‘I endorse every word of 


GEOItGE WASHINGTON. 


505 


that.’ He further added: ‘As I conceive that truth is truth,, 
whether it make for us or against us, I will not conceal from 
you any information of this subject, even such as I have not 
given to the public.’ At the close of our conversation on the 
subject, Dr. Abercrombie’s emphatic expression, was, for T 
well remember his words: ‘Sir, Washington was a Deist.’’ 
“Now, continued Dr. Wilson, I have perused every line that 
Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one* 
expression in which he pledges himself as a professer of Chris¬ 
tianity. I think any man who will candidly do as I have done' 
will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing 
more. I do not take upon myself to say positively that he was„ 
but that is my opinion.” 

There is no proof that Washington was a Christian, while 1 
there is much that he was not . 

It was current knowledge in the early stages of our Govern¬ 
ment that the principal signers of the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence, as well as the authors of the Constitution of the United 
States were Deists and unbelievers in the principal Christian 
dogmas, and this fact has often been assigned as the reason 
why God was not placed in our Constitution. During Washing¬ 
ton’s term of office a treaty was made between our Government 
and Tripoli, wherein it was solemnly declared that “the Gov¬ 
ernment of the United States is not in any sense founded on 
the Christian religion.” 

With Washington’s acceded want of belief in the creed of 
Christianity, his high moral character was never questioned,, 
and volumes have been written in his praise. Jefferson thus, 
wrote of him: “His integrity was the most pure, his justice the* 
most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or 
consanguinity of friendship or hatred being able to bias his 
decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a 
good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and 
high-toned, but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm 
and habitual ascendency over it.” 

Many of the ablest writers of Europe and America have 
spoken in the highest terms of Washington. He is revered by 
millions in this land as the “ Father of his Country ” — “ First in 
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” 


©06 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


The hero of this sketch was born at Fieldhead, England, on 
the 13th of March, 1733. His father was a good, honest, worthy 
man, but was blessed with more children than wealth. By his 
first wife he had six children, of whom Joseph was the eldest. 
During the rigorous winter of 1739, the mother of Joseph died. 
Her punctilious honesty is attested by Priestley himself, who 
relates that she once made him carry back to his uncle’s house 
a pin which he had taken away, and with which he was inno¬ 
cently playing. 

His father married again, and had three children by his 
second wife. After the death of his mother, Joseph went to 
live with an aunt who supplied the place of a mother to him 
till her death in 1764. This aunt and her husband appear to 
have been a very worthy couple, and vastly better than their 
■creed, which was that of the Calvinists. They were strict 
observers of religious discipline, though naturally very kindly 
people. The Sabbath was kept by them with the most rigid 
austerity. No cooking, no recreation, nor enjoyment of any 
sort was permitted upon that day. Light literature was con¬ 
demned altogether. Young Joseph contrived, however, to read 
Robinson Crusoe, but with great fear and trembling; and he 
never ventured beyond that one work of fiction. Indeed, he 
relates that he became so indignant at his brother upon one 
occasion for reading a “ horrible book on Knight Errantry,” 
that, he knocked it out of his hands. 

Joseph’s mind seems to have been quite early exercised upon 
the abstruse mysteries of theology—especially the new birth. 
Still, he made surprising progress in carnal studies. After 
having mastered the branches taught in various inferior schools, 
he at length acquired Latin and Greek in a large free school 
under the care of a Rev. Mr. Hague. A dissenting minister 
named Kirby taught him Greek during his vacations. 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


507 


His aunt and friends had intended him for the ministry, and 
his education had been directed to that end; but an impedi¬ 
ment in his speech decided him to take up some other avoca¬ 
tion. He directed his attention to the learning of languages; 
and such was his marvelous memory and indefatigable industry, 
that in a short time he had not only mastered French, Italian, 
Dutch, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, but had learned geometry, 
algebra, and various branches of mathematics. “Watt’s Logic” 
and “Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding,” became 
his guides in metaphysical investigations. The effect of these 
upon the mind of the young inquirer may be readily appre¬ 
hended. The seeds of skepticism were sown; the repulsive 
creed of Calvin was discarded. 

The keen-scented heresy-hunters of the Church were not 
slow in detecting his lapse from orthodoxy. He was refused 
admission to the communion because of his disbelief in original 
sin and the damnation of man. Yery fortunately for him, 
however, the English Calvinists lacked the secular power to 
enforce that inquisitorial discipline so effectually exercised at 
Geneva in the case of Servetus. 

Priestley passed three years at the Daventry Academy. The 
method of instruction there was for the teachers to discuss 
important subjects with their pupils. This was in order that 
the pupils might know the arguments for and against every 
position. This was better calculated to make a; ute thinkers 
than sound divines. The youthful Priestley was generally 
found on the unorthodox side of the questions discussed. One 
by one the excrescences of error with which his mind had been 
early indoctrinated, were expelled. He finally became estab¬ 
lished in the Unitarian faith. 

On leaving Daventry he became minister to a small congre¬ 
gation at Needham Market, with the miserable salary of forty 
pounds a year, which was hard to collect, and never paid in 
full. While there his leisure was employed in collecting texls 
against the doctrine of the atonement. He relinquished ere 
long all belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. In conse¬ 
quence of his theological views he quit Needham Market, and 
sought to support himself by teaching mathematics; but he 
everywhere found himself under the ban because of his belief* 


508 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, 


Religious rancor would gladly have prevented him earning his' 
bread. It was feared he might convey his heretical poison in 
doses of mathematical demonstration. And so he was com¬ 
pelled to accept engagements in different places as preacher. 

At this period of his life he was quite a student of polite 1 
literature, and a writer of verses. In his Autobiography he* 
says that the recitation of some of his early verses induced 
Mrs. Barbauld to commence writing poetry, and thus he 
observes: “ England is indebted to me for one of the best poets 
it can boa 

Priestley possessed strong scientific proclivities. He felt for 
science the fondness of a lover. For a number of years he- 
experimented in electricity. He met Franklin, the great Amer¬ 
ica n philosopher, in London. Franklin induced him to publish 
his “History of Electric Discovery.” He was introduced to the 1 
Royal Society, and received the degree of Doctor of Laws front 
the University of Edinburgh. 

In 1767 he settled at Leeds as minister of Mill-hill Chapel. 
In 1772, after years of patient experiments, he issued h's famous- 
publication on the subject of air. This spread his fame through, 
the scientific world. Indeed, so celebrated had he become that 
a proposal was made for his accompanying Captain Cook on his- 
second voyage. But his unrelenting foes, the clergy, still hunt¬ 
ing him even within the domain of science, renewing their out¬ 
cry against his undisguised heresy, and he remained at home. 

After a residence of six years at Leeds, principally devoted 
to scientific pursuits, he accepted the post of Librarian to the 
Marquis of Lansclowne. Beside giving him a liberal salary, 
with the promise of an allowance for life, the generous Earl 
allowed him handsome sums for the purchase of costly instru¬ 
ments and whatever was necessary to the prosecution of his 
experiments. It was while with the Earl that he made his 
great discovery of oxygen gas, a discovery which marks an era 
in the history of chemical science, and with which his name 
will be associated forever. 

In 1774 he accompanied the Earl on a tour through Flan¬ 
ders, Holland, and Germany, visiting the most celebrated philos¬ 
ophers and scientists of those countries. Upon his return to 
England, he issued his “Observations on Education,” “Lee- 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


509 


lures on Oratory and Criticism,” and the third part of “Natural 
and Revealed Religion.” The last work was a remarkable expo¬ 
sition of his doctrine of the immateriality of the soul. Of 
course a work so directly counter to orthodox teaching on the 
subject, again stirred up the animosity of his old foes, the Cal- 
vinistic clergy. The hue and cry of “Atheist” was raised, and 
so far and loudly was it vociferated, that the poor Deist who 
had sought to substantiate the existence of Deity by irrefragable 
arguments, now found himself generally looked upon as a hor¬ 
rible heretic who actually denied the be'ng of God. Indeed, he 
name to be regarded as a man with whom a cash-box was not 
^quite safe; and even the Earl at last became anxious to part 
company with a man under such a weight of odium. In this 
.strait he honorably refused the offers of court pensions that 
were made him —not chocsing to be considered “a slave of 
;State.” He did not refuse, however, private subscriptions from 
such true friends of science as desired him to continue his chem¬ 
ical researches. 

At length he joined a Mr. Birth as minister of a Unitarian 
congregation at Birmingham. He here continued his scientific 
labors, and published amongst other works his “History of the 
Corruptions of Christianity,” “History of Early Opinions Con¬ 
cerning Jesus Christ,” and “Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit.” 
This was during the great convulsion n France which startled 
,ali Europe. Party passion ran high, even in England. Priestley 
belonged to a political club which openly avowed its sympathy 
with the revolutionists in France. This club met on the 14th 
of July, 1791, to celebrate the anniversary of the capture of the 
Bastile. Priestley was not present at this meeting; but he was 
a conspicuous man, and the turbulent populace which had been 
urged on by secret impellers to acts of violence, proceeded to 
burn his meeting-house, his dwelling-house, and would have 
undoubtedly burnt him if he had not prudently kept out of 
their reach. The mob smashed his expensive apparatus, burnt 
his library and all his manuscripts, and with great glee ground 
sparks of fire out of his electric machine to help on the flames. 
Priestley asserts that the clergy of the Established Church insti¬ 
gated the riot and directed its operations. Birmingham being 
no longer a safe residence for him, he went to London. 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


510 

At this critical period of his life the members of the Royal 
Society shamefully shunned his company, and he became 
dependent upon his relatives and friends for pecuniary assist¬ 
ance. Threatening letters poured in to him from all quarters, 
some merely denouncing damnation in the life to comr, but 
the most of them hinting at terrible chastisement in this. His 
effigy was frequently burnt along with Paine’s. So great was 
the pressure of religious prejudice that his son was obliged to 
dissolve partnership with a Manchester merchant. The perse¬ 
cuted philosopher could no longer find a safe shelter in his 
native land; and he sorrowfully resolved to quit it. Accord¬ 
ingly, on the 8th of April, 1794, he sailed from London for New 
York, where he arrived on the 4th of June. He met with the 
most flattering reception in the land of his adoption; but hev 
steadfastly declined all the honors that were being pressed upon 
him. He went to Northumberland, where in a delightful spot 
upon the Susquehanna he finally settled. Beloved by all his 
neighbors, he here spent the few remaining years of his life. 
He sought to found a college there, but the scheme failed. He 
was still kindly remembered and assisted by his English friends,, 
who regularly remitted money for his support. 

He was attacked by a fever in 1801, from which he never 
recovered. It had left him greatly debilitated, and he gradually 
grew worse and worse, until on the morning of Monday, 
February 6th, 1804, he breathed his last as peacefully as a child, 
sinking to slumber. Just previous to his death he had the little 
ones of the family assembled around his bedside. The good 
old man, full of that loving piety which never left him through 
all the bitter trials of life, kissed the children farewell, and 
bade them be good and remember his religious injunctions. 
He then composed himself for his last long sleep, from which 
he trusted there would be a glorious awakening. 

Joseph Priestley was truly a great man ; a philosopher, who 
thought and wrote much, and made valuable discoveries. He 
was endowed with uncommon energy and genius, and possessed 
a large measure of that pluck and perseverance which is said 
to characterize Englishmen. Rarely has one man accomplished 
such a vast amount of labor — Rheological, philosophical, politi¬ 
cal, and scientific. In politics he was a Democrat, believing 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


511 


that governments should be based upon the people’s will, and 
conducted solely in their interest. In philosophy he belonged 
to the school of Locke and Hobbs and Hartley, rejecting innate 
ideas, and holding all knowledge to be the result of experience. 
In theology he was a Unitarian, believing in one God, and 
denying the divinity of Christ. He maintained that primitive 
Christianity was simply a recognition of the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man. He thought that the existence 
of God could be completely proved by the argument of design. 
Had he lived a century later, in these days of untrammeled 
thought and evolution, it is probable his lucid intelligence 
would hardly have been content with such arguments. 

“In his treatment of the problem of the existence of evil, he 
by no means manifested his customary rigor of logic and clear¬ 
ness of perception. Moral evil, he argues, is ultimately resolva¬ 
ble into physical pain, and physical pain is necessary to the 
progress of the human race. If we were not stimulated by hum 
ger to partake of food, we should die of inanition. Throughout, 
nature what seems evil is only a necessary part of the great 
providential scheme of good. Now this is the veriest sophistry; 
it is an evasion of the difficulty. The human suffering com¬ 
plained of by those who deny that the existence of evil is irre¬ 
concilable with the existence of a being at once omnipotent and 
good, is not that pain which is a beneficent stimulous to action 
but that appalling misery which, in the shape of congenital 
disease or social servitude or semi-starvation, attends from the 
cradle to the grave vast numbers of the human race, even in 
the most civilized countries of the world. Priestley, however, 
was not the first philosopher who sacrificed reasjn in the 
attempt to gloss over the difficulties of Theistic conceptions. 
His belief in the ultimate perfectibility of mankind does credit 
to his humane feelings, i not to his intellect. Even if it be a 
delusion it is a harmless one. Many people, as Huxley says, 
would be glad to share it, if it could be reconciled with scien¬ 
tific truth. The earth is cooling very fast, and the rate of 
human progress is- very slow, so that the perfected man is 
likely to be only a perfec ed Esquimaux.” Of his contributions 
to science only a scientific man is competent to speak with 
authority. 


512 


JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 


In his Address on “ Priestley’s Life and Labors,” Huxley says: 

“ His contributions to our knowledge of chemical science are 
something surprising—not only surprising in themselves, but 
still more surprising when we consider that he was a man 
devoid of the academic training of Dr. Black, that he had not 
•the means and appliances which practically unlimited wealth 
put at the disposal of Cavendish, but that he had to do what 
so many Englishmen have done before and since — to supply 
academic training by mother-wit, to supply apparatus by an 
ingenuity which could fabricate what he wanted out of wash¬ 
ing tubs, and other domestic implements, and then to do as 
many Englishmen have done before, and many have done 
since, to scale the walls of science without preparation from 
the outside. The number of discoveries that he made was 
something marvelous. I certainly am well within the limit 
when I say that he trebled the number of gases which were 
known before his time, that he gave a precision and definition 
to our knowledge of their general characteristics, of which no 
one before had any idea; and, finally, on the first of August 
1774, he made that discovery with which his n s me is more 
especially connected — the discovery of the substance which at 
the present day is known as oxygen gas.” 

A century later, on the first of August 1874, in Birmingham, 
from whence he had once been driven by theological and polit¬ 
ical hate, a great gathering took place to unveil a sta ue 
-erected to his memory. Prof. Huxley was chosen to present 
the statue to the Mayor of Birmingham, and to deliver a com¬ 
memorative address in the Town Hall. Another great gathering 
of the lovers of science and liberal thought assembled at Leeus, 
the place of his birth, to do honor to his memory. It was the 
centenary anniversary of the discovery of oxygen gas; and not 
.alone in Birmingham and Leeds was celebrated the praise of 
Priestley upon this day; here by the grave of the good o.d 
man, on the banks of the beautiful Susquehanna, assembled the 
savans and th.nkers of America for a similar purpose. The 
world had moved forward a hundred years, and had experi¬ 
enced a great and beneficent change since the learned and 
noble Joseph Priestley had been hunted from his native land, 
and compelled to lay his bones in alien soil. 


GIBBON. 


513 


GIBBON. 


This distinguished English historian was born at Putney in 
1737. On account of his feeble health he was prevented from 
making much progress in classical studies, though he was sent 
at the age of twelve to Westminster School. He became more 
robust, however, when nearly fifteen, and then entered Magda¬ 
len College; but the picture he has drawn of the Oxford pro¬ 
fessors and their discipline gives us anything but a favorable 
impression, and he speaks of the fourteen months he spent 
there as “the most idle and unprofitable of his whole life.” 
Ho wonder that he was about this time converted to that faith 
which always “seeketh whom it may devour,” and especially 
seeketh those who have, by whatever means, been thrown into 
‘‘the void inane of dread suspense.” In consequence of this 
suspension his father sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland, to 
reside with M. Pavillard, a Calvinistic divine, under whose 
teachings he was, seemingly at least, brought back to Protest¬ 
antism. Here he lived retired, preparing himself by study and 
reflection, for future eminence. 

Having attained his majority, he returned to England, and 
three years after brought out his first work, an “Essay on the 
Study of Literature,” written in French, with which language 
he states he was better acquainted at that time than with his 
native tongue. Not long after this he became a military cap¬ 
tain, and enthusiastically pursued the study of military tactics; 
but becoming weary of this, he abandoned it, and in 1763 went 
to Paris, whence he repaired to Lausanne, and then to Rome, 
where, he tells us, “as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the 
Capital, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the 
temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of 
the city first started in his mind.” It was several years, how¬ 
ever, before he commenced his great task. 

On his return to England he wrote a History of the Swiss 
Revolution, but it seems this work was never published. Con- 


514 


GIBBON. 


jointly with a Swiss friend, he began to publish in 1767 a work 
entitled the “Literary Memoirs of Great Britain.” In 1770 
appeared his first work in English, “Critical Observations on 
the Sixth Book of the iEneid.” In 1774 he became Member of 
Parliament, supporting Lord North’s administration, for which 
he received the appointment of Commissioner of Trade, with a 
salary of £800 a year. But soon after, on Lord North’s resig¬ 
nation, he gave up his place in Parliament, and his “convenient 
salary.” 

In 1776 — the year in which the American Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence was promulgated—the first volume of the “Decline 
and Fall of the Boman Empire” appeared, and proved a brilliant 
success. “ The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a 
second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand.” 
The praises of the historians, Hume and Ptobertson, were espec¬ 
ially gratifying to him; and he says in his Autobiography “ a 
letter from Mr. Hume overpaid the labor of ten years.” The 
uncompromising hostility of his great work to the Christian 
Beligion, however, gave great offense to many. Nothing could 
be more natural, of course. Several English divines madly 
rushed forward to attack it. To only one of them —a Mr. 
Davis — did Gibbon reply, and that “because he assailed not 
the faith, but the fidelity of the historian.” This charge, how¬ 
ever, is generally thought to have been fully refuted. In 1781 
the second and third volumes appeared; and in 1783 he again 
retired to Lausanne, where he gave himself up to literary pur¬ 
suits and repose. Here he finished the three remaining vol¬ 
umes, which he published in 1788. In 1793, when the French 
Devolution began to disturb the neighboring State, he returned 
to England, and died in London, January, 1794. 

Alison, the historian, calls the “Decline and Fall” “the 
greatest historical work in existence.” Professor Smyth says it 
“must always be considered as one of the most extraordinary 
monuments that have appeared of the literary powers of a 
single mind; and its fame can perish only with the civilization 
of the world.” Porson observes, “An impartial judge must, I 
think, allow that Mr. Gibbon’s History is one of the ablest 
performances of the kind that has ever appeared. His industry 
is indefatigable; his accuracy scrupulous; his reading, which. 


GIBBON. 


515 


indeed, is sometimes ostentatiously displayed, immense; . . . 
his style emphatic and expressive; his periods harmonious.” 
But the same Porson adds, “He ofte.i makes, when he cannot 
readily find, an occasion to insult our religion.” And our own 
Prescott, after dilating very eloquently and excellently on the 
qualifications demanded of a perfect historian, and speaking of 
Gibbon as one of the most accomplished in this department of 
letters, says that “in his celebrated chapters on the ‘Progress 
of Christianity * ... he has often slurred over in the text 
such particulars as might reflect most credit on the character 
of the religion.” 

This is not the place to defend Mr. Gibbon from his splen¬ 
etic Christian critics. The reader ought by all means to read 
and thoroughly study his great work, and judge for himself, as 
well as he may, of the character of the author. His magnificent 
“Decline and Fall” will survive all the puny attacks of pigmy 
censors, and live in ever-increasing honor as long as the English 
language will be read or spoken; ay, and outlive, in original or 
translation, the already famous “last man.” Its open and 
masked batteries against Christianity did more deadly work 
within the very citadel of the Church than perhaps any other 
one work of the last century. 

“ When Gibbon had concluded a work so grand in its subject, 
and so majestic in its treatment, he thus beautifully described 
his emotions:— ‘It was on the day, or rather night, of the 
27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that 
I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in 
my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in 
a bureau, or covered walks of acacias, which commands a 
prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air 
was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon 
was reflected from the waters, and ail nature was silent. I will 
not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my 
freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my 
pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread 
over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave 
of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever 
might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian 
must be short and precarious.’” 


PART III 


FROM PAINE TO LORD AMBERLEY. 


THOMAS PAINE. 

It has been the fortune of few men in any age or in any 
country to be so maligned, misrepresented, and calumniated, as 
has been the subject of this sketch. Although he was a man 
of genial disposition, of kindly actions, of moral incentives and 
noble purposes, he has been painted by his clerical enemies as 
a monster of wickedness, an incarnate demon, and an enemy 
of God and man. This hatred and misrepresentation which has 
been poured out upon his memory was because he was an 
honest, truthful man, and had the moral integrity and daring 
to proclaim his honest convictions and to give utterance to 
what he believed to be the truth. But though justice is often 
tardy it is nevertheless sure. Sooner or later, hand in hand 
with truth, she will vindicate those who have been wronged, 
a d avenge those who have been slandered and maligned. In 
this centennial year of this nation’s existence a disposition 
prevails, far more general than heretofore, to make amends for 
the wrongs that have been done to the memory of Paine, and 
to give him due credit for the noble self-sacrificing labors he 
performed for the people of this country and of the whole world. 

Thomas Paine was born on the 29th of January, 1737, in 
Thetford, Norfolkshire, England. His father, Joseph Paine, 
was a member of the Society of Quakers — a person of sober 


517 




518 


THOMAS PAINE. 


habits and of good moral character, who secured an honorable 
livelihood at the occupation of stay-maker. His mother’s 
maiden name was Francis Cocke, the daughter of an attorney 
at Thetford, and a member of the Established Church. 

At an early age Thomas was sent to the grammar-school at 
his native village, where he was taught the usual simple 
branches of English education, with some lessons also in Latin; 
but the aversion he early felt to studying the dead languages 
prevented the prosecution of his studies in that direction. He 
did not particularly distinguish himself as a scholar in his 
boyhood and youth; but he early began to use his reasoning 
powers both upon ixditical and theological subjects. 

He left school when about thirteen years of age, and for 
three years worked in his father’s shop, but tiring at length 
with the monotony of the avocation and surroundings, he left 
home and went to London, where he found himself without 
friends or money. He obtained employment there at stay¬ 
making for several weeks, when he went to Dover and obtained 
employment. Becoming tired at length of stay-making, he 
attached himself for a short season to a privateering vessel 
called “The Terrible,” which was called into service upon the 
breaking out of hostilities between England and France. After 
being attached to “The Terrible” for a limited time, he next 
allied himself to another privateersman, called “The King of 
Prussia.” The time he served on these vessels was not long, 
and but little is known about his sea-service. 

In 1759 he settled at Sandwich and engaged at stay-making 
once more, and this time on his own account. Here he became 
acquainted with a young woman named Mary Lambert, whom 
he married nearly a year afterwards. She was the daughter of 
an exciseman, and was said to have possessed considerable per¬ 
sonal attractions. She, however, met an early death —within 
a year from their marriage. Paine moved from Sandwich to 
Margate, thence to London, and thence again to Thetford, 
where he relinquished stay-making and obtained a position on 
the Excise, where he served about a year. After this he visited 
London again and became a teacher of an academy by a Mr. 
Noble, of Goodman Fields. In addition to his duty as a 
teacher, he applied himself closely to the study of astronomy, 


THOMAS PAINE. 


519 


natural philosophy, and mathematics. His mind became greatly 
improved during the time he spent here, and it doubtless aided 
materially in preparing him for the close style of reasoning for 
which at a later period he became distinguished. 

After leaving his scholastic pursuits he again returned to the 
excise duty, and continued thereat for several years. He 
remained in London till 1768, when he removed to Lewes, in 
Sussex, and resided for a year with a Mr. Oliver, a tobacconist, 
at the expiration of which time Mr. Oliver died. In 1771 he mar¬ 
ried a daughter of his deceased friend and opened the shop on 
his own account. 

About this time Paine occupied himself somewhat at writing 
upon political and other subjects. He produced some ballads 
that were considered good. In 1772 he wrote a brief work, 
called “The Case of the Excise Officer,” which attracted con¬ 
siderable attention. An edition of four thousand was printed 
by William Lee, of Lewes. During his residence at this town 
Mr. Paine became not a little distinguished as a man of talents 
in the circumscribed circle in which he moved. His company 
was sought by men of affluence and brains, and many debates 
were held in these social reunions in which he took part. 
But the business of tobacconist and grocer did not seem to 
prosper with him, and in 1774 he discontinued it, or was sold 
out. 

In May of this year articles of separation were agreed upon 
between himself and wife, and they amicably separated, he 
turning over to her the little business, which she afterwards 
conducted so as to afford her a comfortable livelihood. It was 
ascertained that for some reason Paine and his wife did not 
cohabit together, but the reason why is not known. Upon 
being appealed to upon the subject, he admitted the fact, and 
said he “had a reason.” It does not appear that they lived 
unpleasantly together. Although she differed from him in relig¬ 
ious sentiments, they did not contend, and she was not known, 
even after their separation, to speak unkindly of him, nor he 
of her. 

After this event he soon returned to London, doubtless as 
something of an adventurer, and with the hope that something 
for his interest would present itself. He had not been there 



520 


THOMAS PAINE. 


long before he became acquainted with Benjamin Franklin, 
who was at that time representing the colony of Pennsylvania 
and other colonies as ambassador to the English government. 
Franklin saw in Paine proofs of talent and energy, and he 
advised him to go to America, where he believed Paine would 
hardly fail to become a useful member of society, and an 
important aid in the pending imminent struggle in the new 
country. Franklin gave him a letter to a near friend, and in 
the latter part of 1774 he sailed from England and arrived at 
Philadelphia after a voyage of nearly two months. 

Paine possessed a very active temperament and he was but 
a short time idle. He soon formed the acquaintance of Mr. 
Atkin, a respectable bookseller, who in January, 1775, com¬ 
menced the publication of the Pennsylvania Magazine, of which 
Paine became the editor, and soon won the reputation of being 
an able writer. Among the distinguished men who were 
attracted by Paine's clear, concise style, was Dr. Benjamin 
Rush, one of the first men in the young country, and who, it 
is claimed, made important suggestions to Paine in regard to 
his future productions, especially the pamphlet entitled “Com¬ 
mon Sense,” which he brought out soon after. 

These were exciting times in the American Colonies. The* 
parent government, by a series of enactments, had oppressed 
the people of this country. A spirit of discontent was wide¬ 
spread over the land. Low murmurings were heard from all 
localities. The oppressions of the parent government had 
become onerous to the people, but the thought of a separation 
from British control had hardly entered the mind of any 
American. The wish for justice was strong, but the desire for 
independence was yet unborn. Paine soon comprehended the 
situation, and exerted himself to bring about a reconciliation 
between parent and child. He wrote an elaborate letter to tha 
British government, in which he endeavored to show the Eng¬ 
lish masters the injustice of their course to the colonies, and 
that the true interests of the home government would be 
conserved by a course of eniency to the young colonies. He 
did not succeed in this laudable effort. George the Third and 
his Prime Minister saw fit to listen to no such reasoning front 
this source or from others in this country, but with a spirit of 


THOMAS PAINE. 


521 


madness held the hand of oppression firmly upon the necks of 
the colonists. Paine, alive to justice and equity, readily 
espoused the American cause and became thoroughly imbued 
in American interests; and under this inspiration he penned 
the immortal pamphlet “Common Sense,” and which was 
published in January, 1776. It was the first bold, clear, explicit 
argument that had been put forth in favor of a separation from 
the parent government; the first direct assault upon monarchiaL 
rule, and the first advocate for American independence. 

The effects produced by this pamphlet were unparalleled. It 
was almost as much unlooked for as a clap of thunder from a 
clear sky. It astounded some, alarmed others, but enthused 
the American heart. It awakened the most lively enthusiasm, 
and inspired the people to arise in their right and their might, 
and throw off the onerous weight of oppression that was bear¬ 
ing them to earth, and to risk their lives to secure liberty, 
independence, and national life. Probably no work of the same 
size ever produced greater results. Its arguments were unan¬ 
swerable, its reasonin r was irresistible, and its logic most, 
convincing. It portrayed in clear language the practicability of 
an independent government, and boldly advised a forcible- 
resistance to the unjust exactions of a powerful and oppressive- 
nation. It ably indicated how a government could be estab¬ 
lished, in which the control of it could be entirely in the hands 
of the people governed; where the poor and the rich could 
equally share in the rights, duties and benefits pertaining to it; 
in which there should be neither prerogatives nor disabilities 
on account of religious belief. It pointed out how the true 
government of a people was one of equal rights, equal privileges, 
with equal opportunities for preferment and honor. 

Despite the fears that were aroused on the part of those, 
who believed the British Government to be the very acme of 
human perfection, and that it would be far better to submit to 
the wrongs imposed by it, than to raise the arm of rebellion 
against it, the courageous and thrilling words of Paine had a. 
remarkable effect. The masses were infused with his spirit and 
a love of liberty was awakened which never slumbered again. 

Edition after edition of the brave, patriotic pamphlet were- 
successively printed and they were plentifully scattered all over 


522 


THOMAS PAINE. 


the land. Scarcely a mansion, a farm house, or a ca.bin but 
what had a copy of “Common Sense.” It aroused a spirit of 
enthusiasm and brave resolve that can not be fully esti¬ 
mated at this day. A general response like a glad shout arose 
from all parts of the country. It was the war-cry which led a 
young nation to birth and to victory. 

It has been very truly said that no two men of those peril¬ 
ous times did so much to thrill the American heart with an 
enthusiastic love of liberty as did Thomas Paine. He played a 
most important part in that eventful drama. If he w r as not a 
general to lead the thousands to the deadly conflict, he was the 
inciter of a fixed resolve “to do or die.” He was the first to 
suggest American Independence; the first to propose a new 
nation of freemen. It was his pen which for the first time wrote 
the words — “The Free and Independent States of America.” 

His pen had a greater effect upon the inhabitants of this 
young country than all the eloquent speeches made in the Con¬ 
tinental Congress, and that body issued an order that “Com¬ 
mon Sense” should be read at the head of the armies; and it 
was afterwards read in connection with the Declaration of 
Independence, of which document there is very strong grounds 
for believing Paine was the author, in part or whole. Washing¬ 
ton also issued an order from his headquarters directing the 
captains in service to read the pamphlet to their companies. It 
is almost impossible for us at this day to estimate the mag¬ 
ical effect thus produced. 

Washington and the other generals had the best opportuni¬ 
ties for learning the effect which the words of Paine exerted. 
The Commander-in-Chief, when afterwards writing of the enthu¬ 
siasm thus aroused, spoke as follows: “His ‘Common Sense,’ 
and many numbers of his ‘ Crisis ’ were wed timed and had a 
happy effect on the public mind, none, I believe, who will turn 
to the epochs at which they were published, will deny. That 
his services have hitherto passed unnoticed, is obvious to all.” 

Major-General Charles Lee, in a letter to Washington, after 
the appearance of “Common Sense,” wrote in this wise: “Have 
you seen the pamphlet, ‘ Common Sense ?’ I never saw such a 
masterly, irresistible performance. I own myself convinced by 
dhe arguments, of the necessity of separation.” 


THOMAS PAI E. 


523 


In subsequently speaking of Paine he says: “ He burst forth 
on the world like Jove in thunder!” 

“His writings will answer for his patriotism.” 

Samuel Bryan, in speaking of “Common Sense,” said: “This 
book may be called the Book of Genesis, for it was the begin¬ 
ning. From this book spread the Declaration of Independence, 
that not only laid the foundation of liberty in our country, 
but the good of mankind throughout the world.” 

Lossing, in his “Field Book of the Revolution,” said: ‘Com¬ 
mon Sense ’ was the earliest and most powerful appeal in behalf 
of independence, and probably did more to fix that idea firmly 
in the public mind than any other instrumentality.” 

Morse, in his “Annals of the Revolution, said: “The change 
in the public mind in consequence of ‘ Common Sense ’ is with¬ 
out a parallel.” 

James Madison thus wrote of Paine: “Should it finally 
appear that the merits of the man whose writings have so much 
contributed to infuse and foster that spirit of independence in 
the people of America, are unable to inspire them with a just 
beneficence, the world, it is to be feared, will give us as little 
credit for our policy as for our grali ude in this particular.” 

As^a proof of Paine’s disinterestedness and generosity, it may 
be stated that he presented the copyright of “Common Sense” 
do each of the States; and this to a man in his pecuniary cir¬ 
cumstances was no small matter. The sale of it was so large, 
that under ordinary circumstances the income from it would 
have been very considerable. 

After the Declaration of Independence had been duly signed 
by Congress at Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776, and the life of the 
young nation depended upon the result of the ensuing struggle, 
Paine accompanied the army in the capacity of war correspond¬ 
ent and itinerant writer of the patriotic effusions which flowed 
from his prolific pen. It was doubtless truly said that these 
productions of Paine were as effective in promoting the general 
cause as the cannon of the artillery. He went through the 
same hardships the soldiers did; as they fared, so fared he. 

When Washington was defeated on Long Island, and he was 
forced to make a humiliating retreat across New Jersey, his 
.army became greatly reduced and despondent, and the greatest 


524 


THOMAS PAINE. 


gloom prevailed over the entire country. The gallant little 
army, overwhelmed with a rapid succession of disasters and 
misfortunes, was fast dwindling away, and the cause seemed to 
be lost, before scarcely an effective blow had been struck. The 
Tories were exulting in the reverses thus sustained, and predicted 
a speedy reestablishment of the British power in the colonies. 
This was a time when the bravest hearts might well falter and 
the strongest arms fall powerless in the unequal contest. 

It was at this time that Thomas Paine broke upon the young 
nation and the dispirited soldiers with the first number of 
“The Crisis,” wherein he uttered those ever memorable wordsr 
“ These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer sol¬ 
dier and the sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from 
the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves- 
the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is 
not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, the 
harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph; what we- 
obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” To those who seemed 
willing to put the war off to a future day, he said: “ Every 
generous person should say: * If there must be war, let it be in 
my day, that my child may have peace.’ ” To the assertion that 
Americans were only rebels, he answered: “He that rebels 
against reason is a real rebel: but he that, in defending reason,, 
rebels against tyranny, has a better title to ‘ Defender of ther- 
Eaith ’ than George the Third.” 

The first number of “The Crisis” was read in every camp 
and to every corporal’s guard. In the army and out it had a 
most beneficial effect. Courage was aroused and irresolution 
was changed to determination. The Convention of New York, 
which by the dispersion caused by the alarm, had been reduced 
to nine members, was rallied and re-united. Militiamen who 
had already become tired of the contest and straggled away 
returned to the army. Despair gave place to hope, gloom to 
cheerfulness, and irresolution to firmness. The confidence which 
was thus inspired was due to the first number of the magical 
little “Crisis.” 

In view of the cheering effects thus produced upon the dilapi¬ 
dated ranks and the gloomy country we can partially appre¬ 
ciate the justness of these words: “Without the services of 


THOMAS PAINE. 


525 


'Thomas Paine the American Colonies would not have achieved 
their freedom from the British crown; and without his wisdom 
and assistance a free and equal government could not have 
been established upon this continent.” 

His services of similar character continued through the 
entire struggle; and when the outlook was the most cheerless, 
and the courage of the army and country most depressed, then 
was the time for him to put forth his strongest efforts. In Jan¬ 
uary 1777 he issued the second number of the “Crisis.” It was 
addressed to Lord Howe and ridiculed his proclamation “com¬ 
manding all congresses, committees, etc., to desist and cease 
from their treasonable doings” against the king and his pur¬ 
poses; it was full of invective, perhaps more popular than 
exquisite. It was nevertheless very effective. 

Number III of the Crisis was issued April 1777. It was a con¬ 
tinued, elaborate argument in favor of pressing the contest in 
which the country was engaged. Toward the close these words 
occurred: “In the present crisis we ought to know, square by 
•square and house by house, who are in real allegiance with the 
United Independent States, and who are not. Let but the line 
be made clear and distinct, and all men will then know what 
they are to trust to. It would not only be good policy, but 
strict justice, to raise fifty or one hundred thousand pounds, or 
more, if it is necessary, out of the estates and property of the 
king of England’s votaries, resident in Philadelphia, to be dis¬ 
tributed as a reward to those inhabitants of the city and state, 
who should turn out and repulse the enemy, should they 
attempt to march this way, and likewise, to bind the property 
of all such persons to make good the damages which that of the 
wiiigs might sustain. In the undistinguishable mode of con¬ 
ducting a war, we frequently make reprisals at sea, on tne ves¬ 
sels of persons in England, who are friends to our cause, com¬ 
pared to the resident tories among us. If Britain 

cannot conquer us, it proves that she is neither able to govern 
nor protect us, and our particular situation now is such, that 
any connection with her would be unwisely exchanging a half 
defeated enemy for two powerful ones. Europe by every 
appearance, is now on the eve, nay, on the morning twilight of 
a war, and any alliance with George the Third brings France 


526 


THOMAS PAINE* 


and Spain upon our backs; a separation from him attaches 
them to our side; therefore, the only road to peace, honor and 
commerce is Independence. 

Number IY. of the “Crisis” appeared September of the same 
year, Number Y. in March 1778, and Number YI. in the follow¬ 
ing October. The succeeding numbers were issued at intervals 
of a few months and the last number, XYI. was published in 
December 1783. Then he was able to say: “The times that 
tried men’s souls are over and the greatest and completest 
revolution the world ever knew is gloriously and happily 
accomplished. It is not every country —perhaps there is not. 
another in the world —that can boast so fair an origin. Even 
the first settlement of America corresponds with the character 
of the Devolution. Dome, once the proud mistress of the world, 
was originally a band of robbers. Plunder and rapine made 
her rich, and her oppression of millions made her great. But 
America need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor to relate 
the stages by which she rose to empire.” 

On the seventeenth of April, 1777, Mr. Paine was elected by 
Congress Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and 
ably he discharged the duties of the position. All foreign com¬ 
munications were addressed to him. He read them and laid 
them before the Committee. He continued to fill this office till 
January, 1779, when he resigned in consequence of a contest 
which had arisen connected with Silas Deane, who had been 
sent to France as an agent for the United States. Mr. Paine 
opposed the fraudulent conduct of which he believed Deane 
guilty and thereby incurred the enmity of Deane’s friends. Not¬ 
withstanding the dispute which thus arose with Congress it pro¬ 
duced no change in Paine’s patriotism. He continued to pub¬ 
lish the “Crisis” and evinced the same ardor and enthusiasm 
as at first. 

Soon after this time he was chosen Clerk of the Legislature 
of Pennsylvania, which position he filled with his accustomed 
ability. 

As a mark of Paine’s interest in the public cause, it is but 
just to state that at one time when the fortunes of the country 
were at its lowest ebb and the army were suffering for tho 
merest necessaries he started a subscription list, heading it with 


THOMAS PAINE. 


527 


a donation of $500, all the money he had, including the portion 
of the salary due him. Three hundred thousand pounds were 
thus subscribed and raised, which was of immense service in 
tiding the army over the severe straits through which it was 
wearily toiling. 

In 1781 Paine accompanied Col. Laurens to France for the 
purpose of negotiating a loan for the benefit of the United 
States government. They were fortunate enough to secure the 
sum of six million livres as a present, and ten millions as a 
loan. This munificent sum was of incalculable advantage in 
aiding the struggling young nation in its herculean labors. 

During the latter part of the war Paine wrote, in addition 
to the “Crisis,” two other pamphlets which were immediately 
connected with the questions of the times. One was entitled 
“Public Good,” and referred to a dispute between the State of 
Virginia and the general government. But the position he took 
upon the question lost him pecuniary emoluments that he 
otherwise would have received from Virginia; but he acted 
according to the dictates of justice as they presented themselves 
to his mind, regardless of results. The other pamphlet was a 
letter to Abbe Baynal, the object of which was to expose the 
errors and mistakes into which the Abbe had fallen in regard 
to the American revolution. After exposing the Abbe’s errors 
and misrepresentations, he indulged in a variety of philosoph¬ 
ical reflections, of which the following may serve as a specimen: 

“ There is something exceedingly curious in the constitution 
and operation of prejudice. It has the singular ability of 
accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human 
mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among 
mankind and find only here and there a fitness of reception. 
But prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It 
has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is 
room. There is scarcely a situation, except fire and water, in 
which the spider will not live. So, let the mind be as naked as 
the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a 
dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking; 
let it be hot, cold, dark, or light, lonely, or inhabited, still 
prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live, like 
the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one 


528 


THOMAS PAINE. 


prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the 
other does the same; and as several of our passions are 
strongly characterized by the animal world, prejudice may be 
denominated the spider of the mind.” 

A warm friendship existed between Franklin and Paine, and 
between the latter and several of the leading men of the 
nation. As a proof of the high esteem in which he was held 
by Washington we will present a letter written by him to 
Paine, conceiving that probably the circumstances of the latter 
were not in the most flourishing condition. 

“ Rocky Hill, September 10, 1783. 

“Dear Sir: — I have learned since I have been at this place that 
you are at Bordentown. Whethe r for the sake of retirement or econ¬ 
omy I know not. Be it for either, for both, or whatever it maj', if 
you will come to this place and partake with me, I shall be exceed¬ 
ingly glad to see you at it. 

“Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to 
this country; and if it is in my power to impress them, command my 
best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfu ly by 
one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works 
and who with much pleasure subscribes himself, 

“Your sincere friend, 

G. Washington.” 

Paine was urged by many of his friends to appeal to Con¬ 
gress for the compensation so justly due him for his efficient 
services during the seven years of war; but he unifo mly 
refused to do so. He made no claim for the remuneration to 
wnich he was so justly entitled. Several of his friends, how¬ 
ever, interested themselves in his behalf, determined as they 
were that his services should not pass entirely unrewarded. 
As the result of such effor s the Legislature of Pennsylvania, 
presented him with five hundred pounds and the Legislature of 
New York conveyed to him a tract of three hundred and fifiy 
acres of land confiscated from the estate of Frederic Devoe a 
royalist, and situated near New Rochelle in Westchester County, 
N. Y. The land was of good quality, was furnished with good 
buildings and was in every way a pleasant home. 


THOMAS PAINE. 


529 


In 1786 Paine published in Philadelphia “Dissertations on 
Government,” “The Affairs of the Banks,” and “Paper Money.” 
■They were vital questions at the time and attracted much atten¬ 
tion. He was very popular in private life with all his acquaint¬ 
ances. He possessed the manners and habits of a gentleman. 
In conversation he was genial and interesting. As a companion 
he was rarely excelled. Although he could not, perhaps, be 
called a handsome man, he was of very agreeable appearance. 
His eyes were dark, keen, expressive and very pleasant in 
expression. 

At the close of the long struggle the new nation was glad in 
its hour of victory, Paine was greatly honored for the services 
lie had performed, and hardly a man in the nation was more 
esteemed. 

Had Paine been content to here rest from his labors; had 
his active mind been satisfied to abstain from further efforts 
to combat the tyranny of despots, and to aid in giving liberty 
to his fellow men, his name would have been revered by the 
millions who succeeded him, and his praises would have been 
sung by poets, lauded by orators, and his memory would have 
been enshrined in the hearts of all those who were benefited 
by the efforts he had made. But his brave soul dared to do 
other deeds in the direction of liberty, and to use his pen in 
shedding light upon the minds of his fellow beings. 

After peace had been secured in America, and the impend¬ 
ing struggle in France called brave men in her defense, Paine 
was one of the first to lend his services in her behalf. When 
asked by Franklin why he should leave America so soon after 
freedom had been obtained here, and who supplemented his 
enquiry with this remark: “Where liberty is, is my home.” 
Paine characteristically replied: “Ah! where liberty is not , is 
my home,” meaning that it was his pleasure to assist in achiev¬ 
ing it. 

In April, 1787, he sailed from the United States and arrived 
in Paris after a favorable passage. His knowledge of mechan¬ 
ics and natural philosophy had in this country procured him 
the honor of being admitted a member of the American Philo¬ 
sophical Society, as well as being appointed Master of Arts by 
the University of Philadelphia. These academic honors were 


530 


THOMAS PAINE. 


the means of introducing him to several of the most scientific 
men in France, and soon after his arrival he exhibited to the 
Academy of Sciences in Paris a model of an iron bridge which 
he had invented before leaving the United States. It met the 
high approval of the Academy, as it afterwards did of eminent 
mechanics in England. Among others, Sir Joseph Banks wrote 
him a complimentary letter concerning it. Early in September 
Paine left Paris for London, and he soon paid a visit to his 
aged mother in Thetford, who was borne down with infirmities 
and poverty. His father had died. He remained quietly a few 
weeks at Thetford contributing to the needs of his aged parent. 
While there he wrote a pamphlet entitled “Prospects on the 
Rubicon,” which was published in London in 1787. During 1788 
he was principally occupied with building his new bridge at 
Rotherham and Yorkshire. x4.n American merchant, a Mr. 
Whiteside, had aided him in procuring funds for the construc¬ 
tion of the bridge, but becoming bankrupt, and Paine being 
involved with him, was thrown into prison, but was soon 
released by his paying a considerable sum of money which he 
had received from America. 

The situation in France became a matter of great interest to 
all Europe, and as Paine was in confidential communication 
with leading spirits there, he hastened over to Paris to enjoy 
the pleasure of seeing the overthrow of the Bourbon despotism. 

This w T as in 1789. He . oon became thoroughly absorbed in the 
momentous events pass ng around him. The facts and phi¬ 
losophy connected with the French revolution are too elaborate 
to be introduced here. 

In 1791, in reply to Burke’s “Reflections on the French 
R volution,” Paine wrote his most celebrated political work, 
his “Rights of Man.” It has been one of the most popular 
works ever written, and was sufficient to immortalize the 
au'hor, ha 1 he neve: written anything else. 

In September, 1792, he was elected a member of the French 
National Convention by the citizens of the Pas-de-Calais. Upon N 
learning of the honor thus conferred upon him he took passage 
irorn Dover to Calais, and though he was subjected to much 
annoyance by the custom-house officers, he was received with 
great honors by the citizens of Calais, who, among other 


THOMAS PAINE. 


531 


honors, presented him with a national cockade. A very pretty 
woman in the assemblage requested that she might have the 
honor of placing it in liis hat. In doing so she expressed the 
hope that he would continue his exertions in favor of liberty, 
equality, and France. A salute was fired in honor of his 
arrival, a public meeting held, speeches made, etc. “ Vive 
Thomas Paine!” was shouted throughout the city. He was also 
elected deputy for Abbeville, Beauvais, and Versailles; but 
Calais being the first to confer the honor upon him, he preferred 
to be its representative. 

Soon after Paine took his seat in the National Assembly lie 
was appointed on the committee for framing a new constitution, 
and from the experience he had had was enabled to perform 
essential service in that capacity. 

Early in his career as member of the National Assembly 
the trial which had been commenced against him in England 
upon the charge of sedition — based upon sentences taken from 
the “Bights of Man” —was completed. It was held before 
Lord Kenyon and a special jury. The judge was much preju¬ 
diced against Paine, and though the charges were unproved, a 
verdict was easily rendered against him. His duties in Paris 
prevented his being present; but he was defended —if defense it 
may be called—by Mr. Erskine. The noble, liberty-loving 
sentiments enunciated in the “Bights of Man,” were altogether 
too radical to suit the Lords and aristocrats of England. They 
visited upon Paine, so far as they could reach him, the vindic¬ 
tive, intolerant spirit which rankled in their hearts. These 
malignant prosecutions did not stop with Paine himself. Some 
twelve parlies w r ere arr< sted and tried for publishing or selling 
the “Bights of Man.” and an “Address to the Addressers.” A 
majority of the cases were decided agai .st the parties prose¬ 
cuted, and fines and imprisonment were imposed. The effect of 
these prosecutions was to Jesse n the sale of Paine’s publications, 
and this was undoubtedly the object sought. 

To return to Paine and the National Assembly, a party was 
early organized for the purpose of bringing the King (Louis 
XVI.) to trial, and in fact to put him to death. Paine voted 
for the King to have a trial, believing the monarch had been 
reprehensible; but when the .question of death came to be 


532 


THOMAS PAINE. 


voted upon, from a sense of humanity, he opposed it by every 
argument in his power. His efforts, however, proved unavailing. 
The King by a small majority was sentenced to death. But 
Paine was determined to let no opportunity pass without doing 
all in his power to prevent the sentence being carried out. 
When the question was called up he combated the extreme 
measure with great energy. His arguments were deemed able 
and shrewd, but Marat took the position that Paine being a 
Quaker by birth, was incapacitated thereby to exercise the lib¬ 
eral firmness necessary to condemn a man to death. 

The unswerving position which Paine took in this affair had 
the effect to render him an object of hatred to the ultra mem¬ 
bers of the Assembly. When they found he could not be 
induced to participate in these extreme measures, they dreaded 
his opposition to their sanguinary operations, and marked him 
as a victim to be sacrificed the first opportunity. 

He was dining one day at a public restaurant with some 
twen y friends, when unfortunately for the harmony of the 
company, a Captain Grimshaw, of the English service, suc¬ 
ceeded in introducing himself into the party. The military 
gentleman was a stickler for the Constitution in Church and 
State, and a decided enemy to the spirit of the French Revolu¬ 
tion. When the conversation turned upon affairs in England 
and the Government means adopted there to check the spread 
of political knowledge and liberty, Paine expressed himself in 
his usual frank manner, and to the satisfaction of the company 
present, with the exception of the English officer aforesaid, who 
returned Paine’s arguments by calling him a traitor to his 
country. Paine treated this abuse in a good-humored way, 
which rendered the Captain furious, who walked up to where 
Paine w ,s sitting and struck him a violent blow. The cow¬ 
ardice of such conduct for a strong, active young man to strike 
a person over sixty years of age was extremely reprehensible. 
The alarm was sounded at once that a citizen Deputy of the Con¬ 
vention had been struck, and it was regarded as a direct insult 
to the nation at large. The offender was immediately arrested, 
and it was with extreme difficulty that Paine could prevent his 
being executed on the spot. 

The Convention had previously passed an act that a blow 


THOMAS PAINE. 


533 


given to a Deputy should be punished with death. Paine was 
placed in a painful situation. He applied at once to Barrere, 
President of the Committee of Public Safety, for a passport to 
enable his imprudent assailant to leave the country. The 
request at length was granted, but it occasioned Paine not a 
little inconvenience to procure Grimshaw’s liberation. But this 
was not all, the Captain was without friends and penniless, and 
Paine generously supplied him with money to make his way to 
England and thus saved his life. 

The National Convention became divided into factions, each 
intent on its own agrandizement. Terror, hatred, superstition, 
revenge, and every other dark and deadly passion supplanted 
the just and liberal principles which marked the beginning of 
the Revolution. A spirit of madness seemed to take possession 
of minds that should have remained clear, cool and reasonable. 
The gentle, concilia!ing and highly honorable maiii er in which 
Paine had carried himself prevented his being impeached, but 
a strong desire grew up to displace him. The first attempt 
against him was by means o' 1 an act that had been passed, that 
all persons living in France that were born in England should 
be imprisoned, but as Paine was a member of the Convention, 
and had been complimented with the title “Citizen of France,” 
the act failed to apply to him. A motion was then made by 
Bourdon de l’Oise to expel foreigners from the Convention, and 
this motion prevailed. Robespierre was the dictator of the 
Committees of Public Safety and General Surety, and in the 
spirit of madness which seemed to possess him, he caused 
Paine’s arrest and confined him in the "Luxembourg. On his way 
to prison Paine contrived to call upon his friend, Joel Barlow, 
and left with him the manuscript of the first part of the “Age 
of Reason.” This work he had intended to be the last of his 
life, but the late events in France had determined him to delay 
it no longer. 

In the general wreck of superstitions and all systems of 
religion, and of the national order of priesthood, Paine deemed 
the work necessary as a conservative influence and to preserve 
the elements of morality, humanity and a true theology. It 
was written under the almost daily expectation of being sum¬ 
moned to the guillotine, where many of his friends had already 


531 THOMAS PAINE. 

perished. The doctrines and sentiments, therefore, which it 
contains may justly be regarded as the expressions of a dying 
man. In fact he had finished the work but six hours before he 
was taken to prison. 

When Paine had been in prison three weeks it became evi¬ 
dent to all reasonable persons that he was innocent of any 
crime, and the American residents in the city went in a body to 
the Convention and asked for his release. Their address to the 
Convention was in this language:—“Citizens! The French nation 
had invited the most illustrious of all foreign nations to the 
honor of representing her. Thomas Paine, the apostle of liberty 
in America, a profound and valuable philosopher, a virtuous 
and esteemed citizen, came to France and took a seat among 
you. Particular circumstances rendered necessary the decree to 
put under arrest all the English residing in France. 

“Citizens! Representatives! We come to demand of you 
Thomas Paine, in the name of the friends of liberty, and in the 
name of the Americans, your brothers and allies; was there any¬ 
thing more wanted to obtain your demand we would tell you. 
I)o not give to the leagued despots the pleasure of seeing 
Paine in irons. We shall inform you that the seals put upon 
the papers of Thomas Paine have been taken off, that the com¬ 
mittee of general safety examined them, and far from finding 
among them any dangerous propositions, they only found the 
love of liberty which characterized him all his lifetime, that 
eloquence of nature and philosophy which made him the friend 
of mankind, and those principles of public morality w T hich mer¬ 
ited the hatred of kings, and the affection of his fellow citizens. 

“In short, citizens! if you permit us to restore Thomas 
Paine to the embraces of his fellow citizens, we offer to pledge 
ourselves as securities for his conduct during the short time 
he shall remain in France.” 

The answer to this address was, that Paine was born in 
England and that their claim upon him as an American citizen 
could not be listened to. A few days after this all communica¬ 
tions were prohibited with persons imprisoned, and for six 
months Paine was debarred from the visits of his friends. He 
passed his time during this long imprisonment in writing 
various poetical and prose compositions, a part of which have 


THOMAS PAINE. 


535 


been published. He, likewise, during this period wrote a large 
portion of Part II. of the “Age of Reason.” When he had 
been in prison about eight months he was seized with a violent 
fever which nearly deprived him of his life, and from the 
effects of which lie never fully recovered. It rendered him 
insensible more than a month, but was unquestionably the 
means of saving his life. Among those whom the mad Robes¬ 
pierre had determined should be beheaded was Paine. A chalk 
mark was placed upon the door of each victim for death, as a 
guide to the parties who should call for them, but on account 
of the illness of Paine his door was standing open at the time 
the chalk marks were made and when his door was shut the 
chalk mark was inside and thus he fortunately escaped. 

When he recovered consciousness he heard of the fall of 
Robespierre, but owing to the fact that his friends were still 
in rule it was not till eleven months had elapsed that Paine 
was released — a long imprisonment, truly, for committing no 
offense. After his releasement from prison James Monroe, then 
American Minister to the Court of France, invited Paine to his 
house. He accepted the invitation and remained there eighteen 
months. Monroe was a true friend to him first and last. 

The Convention unanimously voted for Paine to resume his 
seat with them, and entertaining no malice for the injury that 
had been done him, he complied. As ever, he proved himself 
active, fearless and efficient. 

At the time Paine was sent to prison, there was but one other 
foreigner, Anacharsis Clootz, in the convention. He was sent 
to prison by the same vote, and carried to prison by the same 
order, and on the same night. He was taken to the guil otine, 
and Paine was left. Joseph Lebon, a vile character, was Paine’s 
suppliant as member of the Convention for the department of 
Calais; and when Paine was sent to prison, Lebon took his 
place and occupied his seat. When Paine was liberated from 
prison and was voted again into the Convention, Lebon was 
sent to prison —as it were, took Paine’s place there—and was 
afterwards sent to the guillotine; then it was said that he filled 
Paine’s place all around. 

In 1797 a society called the “ Theophilanthropists ” was 
organized, of which Paine was one of the principal leaders. 


536 


THOMAS PAINE. 


Their object was the promotion of morality, the extinction of 
religious prejudice and a belief in one God. Paine delivered a 
discourse before this society, in which he gave his reasons for 
rejecting the doctrines of Atheism, which at that time were 
prevalent. It was really his belief in the existence of a Deity 
that made him unpopular with a large proportion of the citi¬ 
zens of Paris; and this work, which he wrote in part to coun¬ 
teract the ultra-rndicalism which prevailed in France, alienated, 
from him the entire Christian world. 

It is hardly necessary to refer at length here to the grandest 
w r ork of his life, the “Age of Reason.” As a clear, concise, 
argumentative examination of the authenticity and reliability of 
the Scriptures, it stands at the head of all that has been written 
upon the subject. It was written in a spirit free from rancor, 
but it brought down upon the head of Paine the enmity and 
abuse of the Church in all its branches. His unanswerable 
arguments stirred up their deepest ire. How much soever he 
had been honored for his patriotism and his love of liber, y and 
of man: notwithstanding the self-sacrificing efforts he had made 
in putting down the tyranny of kings, and in promoting the 
rights of the oppressed people, when he presumed to use hi& 
pen in showing the crimes of priestcraft, and in exposing a 
bondage worse than the tyranny of kings, an oppression that 
bound not the body merely, but enslaved the intellect and 
chained the mind in fetters of darkness and superstition, their 
hatred toward him knew no bounds. 

Paine saw that the Christian world was enslaved by a blind 
belief in a series of theological dogmas based upon an old 
Jewish book, worshiped as an idol, and accepted as the infalli¬ 
ble word of the Creator of the Universe. It was clear to his. 
mind that that book was not what it was claimed to be; that 
it was not infallible truth; that it could not have been the 
work of an all-wise, all-powerful and ail-truthful God. He saw 
that his fellow-men were groping in darkness in this regard, 
and with the promptings of a philanthropic mind, he commu¬ 
nicated the results of his investigations to the woild. He dared, 
to occupy ground opposed to the errors of centuries. 

For this, the most deadly hatred that ever rankled in th& 
human breast, was aroused against him. He was denounced: 


THOMAS PAINE. 


53T 


from a thousand pulpits, and from thousands of firesides, as 
“a demon,” “a liar,” “a guilty wretch.” 

This course of Christian treatment seemed to be about all 
that his enemies were capable of extending towards him. The 
truths he uttered, the arguments he adduced and the reasons 
he advanced, they have never successfully met. Slander, abuse 
and lies have been the only weapons th y have been able to 
employ, and in the language of Paine hims *lf, in alluding to the 
Christian line of conduct, “when they have found themselves 
unable to answer his arguments, they assailed my character.” 

After the reign of terror had in some degree subsided, Paine’s 
political pen returned to its former employment. He wrote 
several pamphlets less liable to influence the enmity of the 
intolerant, than the “Age of Reason.” Among them were a 
“Dissertation on the first Principles of Government.” “Agra¬ 
rian Justice opposed to Agrarian Law,” and the “Decline and 
Pall of the English System of Finance.” They evinced much 
original thought and attracted due attention. In 1796 Paine; 
published a “Letter to General Washington,” the principal 
subject being the treaty which had recently been concluded 
between the United States and Great Britain. He also alluded! 
to the cold neglect with which Washington treated him while 
in the French prison. In view of the high opinion which 
Washington entertained of Paine’s invaluable services in our 
revolut ion it is difficult to understand why he did not interpose? 
in favor of Paine’s release. This negative fault is undoubt¬ 
edly one of the most reprehensible which appears in Washing¬ 
ton’s record. It is possible he had good reasons for his non¬ 
intervention, but if so they are not apparent. Of the high esti¬ 
mation in which Washington’s Minister to France, James Mon¬ 
roe, held Paine it is only to be remembered that as soon as. 
Paine was released from prison he invited him to his own house 
where he remained eighteen months. 

la 1797 Paine published a “Letter to the people of France,” 
on the Events of eighteenth Fructidor,” and a “ Letter to 
Camille Jordan.” 

During Paine’s residence in Paris he made the acquaintance 
of Mr. Bonneville who was editor of a paper, and for some 
time resided in his family. He received many kindnesses from 


638 


THOMAS PAINE. 


Mr. Bonneville, who frequently made loans to Paine when the 
latter failed to receive remittances from America, or he was 
otherwise in need. These repeated kindnesses Paine had after¬ 
wards an opportunity of returning. When Bonaparte came into 
supreme power, Bonneville’s paper was suppressed and himself 
greatly injured financially. About this time, as liberty seemed 
hopelessly absorbed by the splendid military talents and achiev- 
ments of Napoleon, Paine resolved to return to the United 
States, and he offered an asylum to the wife of his friend. Mrs. 
Bonneville and her three sons were accordingly forwarded, in 
1802, by Mr. Bonneville, he intending to follow soon himself. 

Paine took passage for Baltimore, in which city he stopped 
a limited time after his arrival, when lie called upon President 
Jefferson in Washington (and visited the Heads of the Depart¬ 
ments.) They were personal friends, indeed they kept up a cor¬ 
respondence till Paine’s death. Jefferson had invited Paine to 
return to the United States and sent out a ship to bring him 
home. Jefferson proposed to give Paine one of the best 
offices in his gift, but the latter respectfully declined the offer. 
He was then sixty-five years of age. His property here had 
improved in value and was worth some $30,000; which at that 
time was a comfortable fortune. His wants were few, his ambi¬ 
tion was satisfied, and he no longer wished official position. 

He soon visited New York and stopped at Lovett’s Hotel, 
where many of his old friends, and others who knew him through 
his books, called to pay their respects to him. The amount of 
honors thus conferred upon him were very considerable, but it 
cannot be said that Paine was popular. The consolidated influ¬ 
ence of the Church was bitterly turned against him. Every 
indignity and injury which they were capable of doing they 
seemed disposed to visit upon him. He had had the temerity 
to attack the citadel of their darling superstition, and they 
•could never forgive him. 

Paine made his home on his farm at New Bochelle, boarding 
a portion of the time with the family who rented it, and a part 
of the time he passed in New York. When Mrs. Bonneville 
and her three sons arrived from France upon the invitation of 
Paine, he proposed that she should occupy his farm at Borden- 
town, where he wished she might open a school. The employ- 


THOMAS PAINE. 


539 


ment and the locality seemed not to please her. She preferred 
New York. The expense of her family fell upon Paine to 
defray. She knew little of economy in the sense that Paine 
practiced it, and the paying of the bills that she contracted cre¬ 
ated some dissatisfaction, the details of which need not be recited 
here. Neither is it well that space be taken to recount all the 
incidents of the last few years of Paine’s life. He passed his 
time, as remarked, partly in the city and partly at his farm, 
boarding sometimes with one family and sometimes with an¬ 
other. He wrote no work of note after he returned from Europe, 
with the exception of the “Examination of the Prophecies,” 
which w T as written in New York in 1807, two years before his 
death. It showed all the acumen of his former works and indi¬ 
cated the close examination he gave the subject. 

Bold • slanders and bare falsehoods have been reported of 
Paine connected with the closing years of his life. The calum¬ 
niator, Cheetham, (not improperly named,) w T ho wrote a very 
untruthful life of Paine, stated that Paine was filthy in his 
person and very intemperate in his jjractices. There was no 
foundation in truth for these statements, which were wholly the 
result of the basest malice. He was no more untidy in person 
than what is common with men in advanced life. In fact, many 
of his acquaintances testified that he was decidedly neat in his 
person. 

The charge of intemperance was wholly false. As was cus¬ 
tomary with a large portion of the people seventy years ago, 
he made some use of spirits, but not to excess. The regular 
quantity which he allowed himself was one quart per week, 
and this included what was partaken of by visitors. He did 
not get intoxicated. Those who knew him best testified to his 
uniform temperate habits, while the charge of intemperance 
was made by those w T ho knew little or nothing of him. Mr. 
Bellows, a truthful person, w T ho was intimate with Paine from 
the time he returned to this country until his death, testified 
that he was careful and cleanly in person, and that he never 
saw him disguised with liquor but once, and that was at a din¬ 
ner party, and then he was not intoxicated, but simply a little 
excited. Mr. Burger, a respectable watch and clock maker, and 
who for many years had the charge of the public clocks in New 


540 


THOMAS PAINE. 


York, was intimately acquainted with Paine, and he bore the 
same testimony in reference to his temperate habits. lie often 
rode out with Paine, and he found him invariably temperate 
and prudent. The writer of this article has visited the former 
farm of Paine at New Bochelle, and the farm-house and the 
very apartment which was Paine’s own room. He conversed! 
with Major Cautant and D. P. Barker, very respectable citizens* 
now very aged, but who distinctly remember Thomas Paine and 
of seeing him very frequently when he was at New Rochelle. 
They never saw him intoxicated, nor in the least under the 
influence of liquor; nor did they hear of his being so from any 
source save the slanderer mentioned. They remember Paine as a 
genial, social man, and with remarkably bright, pleasant eyes, 
which they particularly mentioned. 

Another mo^t false slander has been iterated and reiterated 
about Paine in reference to his last sickness, and that he 
recanted on his death-bed. The most absurd stories have been 
told of his renouncing his life-long convictions, and calling on 
Jesus for pardon, and wishing he had never written the “ Age of 
Reason.” On the other hand divines have circulated a report 
that they visited him when lying on his death-bed and that he 
raved and cursed God and used such language as this: “ Begone, 
trouble me no more. I was in peace before you came. Away with 
you, and your God too. Leave the room instantly. All that you 
have uttered are lies, and if I had a little more time I could 
prove it, as I did about your impostor, Jesus Christ.” Within 
the present year a letter has been published in some of our 
daily papers purporting to have been written by Bishop Fen¬ 
wick of the Catholic Church, after making a visit to Paine, upon 
which occasion he, Paine, used the above language, conflicting 
entirely with the statements made by Protestant clergymen. 
Nothing could be more false than either statement and nothing 
could be more unlike Paine. He neither denied the honest con¬ 
victions of his life, nor cursed God, nor spoke abusively of him. 
He believed in a Supreme Being, and had never said or writ¬ 
ten aught against him, and it is wholly unlikely that he would 
thus turn against him when dying. No such party visited 
Paine in his last sickness. The clergy have many times proved 
it to be vastly easier to lie about Paine and slander him basely 


THOMAS PAINE. 


541 


than to refute the arguments he advanced. Two years before 
Iris death, when he was seventy years of age, when his mind 
was clear and composed, and when he knew that, in the course 
of nature, he could live but a few years longer, he wrote his 
“ Examination of the Prophecies,” and it is as strong in his line 
•of thought as anything he ever wrote. Still later he published 
a poem entitled “The Strange Story of Korah, Datham, and 
Abiram,” which indicated no change of opinion. 

But a short time before his death, and when he was per- 
iectly conscious that he could live but a short while, and 
seeming to have a presentiment of the attempts that would be 
made to convert him, and the false reports that would be circu¬ 
lated after his death, Mr. Paine called upon his friend Mr. 
Jarvis, with whom he was boarding, to notice what his sen i- 
ments were. Then appealing to Mr. Jarvis, he said, “Now, I 
-am in health, and in perfect soundness of mind; now is the time 
to express my opinionand then he gave explicitly a sketch of 
his belief which perfectly agreed with what he had previously 
written. 

Among the most prominent and zealous visitors of Paine in 
his last sickness were the Itev. Mr. Milledollar, a Presbyterian 
clergyman, and the Bev. Mr. Cunningham. About a for.night 
before Paine’s death, the latter gentlemen told Paine that they 
visited him as friends and neighbors, and added, “You have 
now a full view of death, you cannot live long, and whosoever 
•does not believe in Jesus Christ will surely be damned.” Mr. 
Paine answered, “Let me have none of your popish stuff. Get 
.away with you; good morning, good morning.” Mr. Milledol¬ 
lar attempted to address him, but Paine would not permit it, 
and after they left he said to his nurse and housekeeper, Mrs. 
Hedden, “Don’t let them come here again, they trouble me.” 
They however again attempted to see him, but by Mr. Paine’s 
express orders they were denied admit ance. 

Mr. Willet Hicks, a most respectable and truthful g<n..e- 
man, a member of the Society of Friends, and himself a preacher, 
.and who deceased but a few years ago, was a neighbor of Mr. 
Paine during his last sickness, and visited him daily up to the 
day of his death. This gentleman testified to Gilbert Yale and 
others who called upon him to learn what he knew of Paine’s 


5454 


THOMAS PAINE. 


last days. He stated that the dying philosopher was’beset by 
inquisitive clergymen, and that on one occasion a Methodist, 
minister intruded himself into the presence of Mr. Paine while 
he — Mr. Hicks — w T as present. The minister declared to Mr. 
Paine, with uplifted hands, that “unless he repented of his 
unbelief, he would be damned.” Mr. Paine then partially rose- 
in his bed, with evident indignation toward the intruder, and 
urged him to leave, adding that if he was able, he would put 
him out of the room. 

A Mr. Pigott made this statement: He called with his brother,, 
who was a minister, and who desired to make an appeal to 
Paine before his death. Mr. Pigott had been a friend, and to 
some extent a disciple of Paine, and from this fact they easily 
gained admission. Mr. Paine received them with politeness and 
conversed with the preacher until they reached the subject of 
his abandoning his belief. Paine abruptly closed the inter¬ 
view, not concealing the annoyance which the conversation 
caused him, and with the wish that they wmild leave him. Mr. 
Pigott further testified that Mr. Paine was a large-faced man, 
with a pleasing, penetrating eye, and an open, agreeable coun¬ 
tenance. It annoyed Paine not a little when he learned that 
Mi. Pigott had changed his religious views. 

The friends of Paine visited him daily till his death. Mr. 
Jarvis saw him on the day before he died, and on that day the 
sick man expected to die that night. To Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Paine- 
again expressed a firm and continued belief in the sentiments 
which he had written many years before. Mr. Thomas Nixon 
and his old friend Mr. Pelton visited Mr. Paine expressly as to his 
religious opinions. So also did Mr. B. F. Hasken, a respectable 
attorney, who for fifty years was a resident of New York City. 
These gentlemen being aware of the mis-statements often made 
in such cases, deemed it prudent to take Mr. Paine’s statements 
down in writing. When at first they proposed their enquiries, 
Mr. Paine, not aware of their object, seemed hurt at their 
questions, but assured them that no change had taken place in 
his mind. A statement of these facts, Messrs. Nixon and Pelton 
made in writing to Mr. Wm. Cobbett, when he visited this, 
country in 1818 . 

Mr. Amasa Woodsworth also testified that he visited Mr. 


THOMAS PAINE. 


545 

Paine every day for six weeks up to the day he died, and he*, 
was positive that Mr. Paine’s mind and opinions underwent no 
change. Madame Bonneville, who spent much time with the 
sick man up to the day of his death, was positive that Paine 
never recanted in the slightest degree. Dr. Manley, Mr. Paine’s, 
physician, and who visited him daily, was very sure that Paine 
made no denial of the views he had held for many years. To* 
those who urgently pressed the subject upon the dying man 
as to his belief in Jesus Christ, he calmly replied: “ My belief 
has undergone no change, and I have no desire to have any 
further views upon the subject.” Other testimony in this direct 
tion might be cited, but it is hardly necessary. To the evi¬ 
dence of all the>e respectable people is opposed the misrepre¬ 
sentations and falsehoods of those, who, after the good man 
had gone to his quiet grave, were willing to falsify him and 
traduce his fair name. 

Mr. Paine died June 8th, 1809, aged seventy-two years and 
five months. He left the worid greatly indebted to him for the 
labors he had performed in it. He left the world enjoying more 
liberty, both physical and mental, than he found in it. He 
devoted many decades of his life to promote the real welfare of 
his kind; to advance the knowledge and happiness of the 
world. He dealt sturdier blows upon the darkening monsters 
of superstition, ignorance and error than but a very limited 
number of his race have done. He has erected such a monu¬ 
ment of glory and fame to his memory as will stand for centu¬ 
ries to come, the cap-stone of which, mental liberty, will never 
be obscured by the mists and fogs of priestcraft and theological 
oppression. 

It is but a matter of justice that mention should here be. 
made of the reasonable claim for authorship to the celebrated 
“Junius Letters,” and also to that of the “ Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence,” which has been made in favor of Paine; though room 
can be spared for a mere glance only. A volume of 335 pages 
— “Junius Unmasked ” —was published in Washington (1872k 
of which Wm. Henry Burr is understood to be the author, in 
which very strong argum nts are presented in favor of Paine’s 
being the author of the “Junius Letters ” which were published. 
In England in the years 1769, ’70, and ’71, and which perhaps 


544 


THOMAS PAINE. 


attracted more attention than almost any equal amount of 
literary matter ever penned. 

It must be admitted that the author makes out a very strong 
case that Paine was the writer of the Junius letters. Over three 
score of parallel extracts are given, both from Junius and 
Paine, showing a striking similarity in “common sense, style, 
and mental characteristics,” and by way of summary, nearly 
one hundred points of similarity between the two are named. 
It will not be attempted to decide here whether the case is fully 
made out, but that the arguments are as strong that Paine was 
the author, and are as forcible as those made in favor of the 
numerous other persons named in connection with the author¬ 
ship of the Letters, cannot be denied. 

The same with regard to the Declaration of Independence; 
Mr. Burr presents very strong proof that Paine was the real 
author of that important document. The style of the language 
— the clearness, simplicity, and terseness — is much more like 
Paine than Jefferson. It is in many important particulars a 
condensed reproduction of “ Common Sense,” and it is unreason¬ 
able to suppose Jefferson should have rex>roduced that pamphlet. 

Mr. Burr dissects the Declaration, almost sentence by sen¬ 
tence, and points out Paine’s style throughout the entire docu¬ 
ment. It is also claimed that the original draft was in Paine’s 
handwriting. Without venturing to decide the question of auth¬ 
orship, or to detract from either of those great minds, or to 
pluck from either a single laurel to which he is entitled; as 
they were warm personal friends and equal, y interested in the 
struggle then impending; as they both indorsed the Declara¬ 
tion, it may be safely decided that the great paper was pre¬ 
pared between them, and that both were consulted in reference 
to it. Let all due honors be extended to both. 

Although bad and untruthful men have lent their vile 
tongues and pens to traduce the memory of a great and good 
man, it is cheering to be able to point to a vast amount of tes¬ 
timony, from the best sources in America and in Europe, in his 
favor. Want of space will allow but a small portion of it to be 
introduced here. 

Samuel Adams, a sturdy patriot of the Bevolution, in a let¬ 
ter to Paine, said: “I have frequently, with pleasure, reflected 


THOMAS PAINE. 


545 

on your services to my native and your adopted country. Your 
'Common Sense’ and your ‘Crisis’ unquestionably awakened 
the public mind and led the people loudly to call for a Declar¬ 
ation of our National Independence.” 

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Francis Eppes, says: “You 
ask my opinion of Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine. They 
were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and phari¬ 
sees of their day. Both were honest men; both advocates for 
human liberty. These two men differed remarkably in the style 
of their writing, each having a model of what is most perfect 
in both extremes of the simple and the sublime. No writer 
has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspi¬ 
cuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and 
unassuming language. In this he may be compared with Dr. 
Franklin.” 

Andrew Jackson said: “Thomas Paine needs no monument 
made by hands; he has created himself a monument in the 
hearts of all lovers of liberty. The ‘Bights of Man’ will be 
more enduring than all the piles of marble and granite that 
man can erect.” 

William Cobbett, a celebrated English writer, in alluding to 
Paine’s financial writings, says: “In principles of finance, Mr. 
Paine was deeply skilled; and to his very great and rare talents 
.as a writer, he added an uncommon degree of experience in the 
concerns of paper money. Events have proved the truths of 
his principles on this subject, and to point out the fact is no 
more than an act of justice due to his talents, and an act par¬ 
ticularly due to my hands, I having been one of his most 
violent assailants.” On another occasion he said: “I saw 
Paine first pointing the way, and then leading a nation through 
perils and difficulties of all sorts to independence, and to last¬ 
ing liberty, prosperity and greatness.” 

Rev. M. D. Conway, in an address on Paine’s birthday, in 
Cincinnati, O., 1860, said: “All efforts to stain the good name 
of Thomas Paine have recoiled on those who made them, like 
poisoned arrows shot against a strong wind. In his life, in his 
justice, in his truth, in his adherence to high principles, in his 
disinterestedness, I look in vain for a parallel in those times 
and in these times.” 


546 


THOMAS PAINE. 


Clio Hickman, an English author, says: “ Why seek occasion* 
critics and detractors, to maltreat and misrepresent Mr. Paine? 
He was mild, unoffending, sincere, gentle, humble and unas¬ 
suming ; his talents were soaring and acute, profound, extensive, 
and original, and he possessed that charity which covers a 
multitude of sins.” 

Rev. George Croly, in his “Life of George IV.,” thus speaks 
of Paine: “An impartial estimate of this remarkable man has 
been rarely formed, and still more rarely expressed. He was 
assuredly one of the original men of the age in which he lived. 
It has been said he owed success to vulgarity. No one compe¬ 
tent to judge could read a page in his ‘Rights of Man,’ without 
seeing that this is a clumsy misrepresentation. There is a pecul¬ 
iar originality in his style of thought and expression; liis dic¬ 
tion is not vulgar or illiterate, but nervous, simple and scientific.” 

Judge Hertell bore such testimony as this: “No man in 
modern ages has done more to benefit mankind, or distin¬ 
guished himself more for the immense moral good he has 
effected for his species, than Thomas Paine; who, in truth, 
merits eternal life, and doubtless will be immortalized in the 
memory and gratitude of future generations of happy beings, 
who will continue to hymn his praises, and make his merits 
known to the remotest posterity.” 

Napoleon Bonaparte addressed to Mr. Paine these words: “A 
statue of gold ought to be erected to you in every city in the 
Universe. I assure you I always sleep with the ‘Rights of 
Man ’ under my pillow. I desire you to honor me with your 
correspondence and advice.” 

Joel Barlow who was intimately acquainted with Thomas 
Paine, used this language: “He was one of the most benevolent 
and disintere-ted of mankind: endowed with the clearest per¬ 
ceptions and an uncommon share of original genius, and the 
greatest depth of thought. He ought to be ranked among the 
brightest and most undeviating luminaries of the age in which 
he lived. He was always charitable to the poor beyond his 
means, a sure protector and a friend to all Americans in distress 
whom he found in foreign countries; and he had frequent occa¬ 
sion to exert his influence in protecting them during the revol¬ 
ution in France.” 


THOMAS PAINE. 


547 


Theodore Parker in writing to a near friend used this lan¬ 
guage: “I see some one has written a paper on Thomas Paine, 
in the Atlantic Monthly , which excites the wrath of men who 
are not worthy to stoop down and untie the latchet of his 
shoes, nor to black his shoes, nor even to bring them home to 

him from the shoe black.It must not be denied 

that he seems to have had less than the average amount of 
personal selfishness or vanity; his instincts were humane and 
elevated, and his life devoted mainly to the great purposes of 
humanity. His political writings fell into my hands in early 
boyhood, and I still think they were of immense service to the 

country.I think he did more to promote piety and 

morality among men than a hundred ministers of that age in 
America. He did it by si. owing that religion is not responsible 
for the absurd doctrines taught in its name.” 

A few passages from Colonel Kobert G. Ingersoll’s inimit¬ 
able “Oration on Paine” must not be omitted: 

“Paine denied the authority of Bibles and creeds —this was 
his crime—and for this the world shut the door in his face, 
and emptied its slops upon him from the windows. 

“I challenge the world to show that Thomas Paine ever 
wrote one line, one word in favor of tyranny —in favor of 
immorality; one line, one word against what he believed to be 
for the highest and best interests of mankind; one line, one 
word against justice, charity, or liberty, and yet he has been 
pursued as though he had been a fiend from hell. His memory 
has been execrated as though he had murdered some Uriah for 
his wife; driven some Hagar into the desert to starve with his 
child upon her bosom; defiled his own daughters; ripped open 
with the sword the sweet bodies of loving and innocent women; 
advised one brother to assassinate another; kept a harem with 
seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, or had per¬ 
secuted Christians even unto strange cities. 

“The Church has pursued Paine to deter others. No effort 
has been in any age of the world spared to crush out opposi¬ 
tion. The Church used pain ing, music, and architecture, sim¬ 
ply to degrade mankind. But there are men that nothing can 
awe. There have been at all times brave spirits that dared 
even the gods. Some proud head has always been above the 



548 


THOMAS PAINE. 


waves. In every age some Diogenes has sacrificed to all the 
gods. True genius never cowers, and there is always some Sam¬ 
son feeling for the pillars of authority. 

“Cathedrals and domes, and chimes and chants —temples 
frescoed, and groined, and carved, and gilded with gold —altars 
and tapers, and paintings of Virgin and babe — censer and chal¬ 
ice, chasuble, paten and alb — organs and anthems and incense 
rising to the winged and blest — maniple, amice and stole — 
crosses and crosiers, tiaras and crowns—mitres and missals 
and masses — rosaries, relics and robes — martyrs and saints, 
and windows stained as with the blood of Christ, never for one 
moment awed the brave, proud spirit of the Infidel. He knew 
that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with liberty 
— that priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at the cathedral 
he remembered the dungeon. The - music of the organ was not 
loud enough to drown the clank of fetters. He could not for¬ 
get that the taper had lighted the fagot. He knew that the 
cross adorned the hilt of the sword, and so where others wor¬ 
shiped, he wept and scorned. 

“ The doubter, the investigator, the Infidel, have been the 
saviors of liberty. This truth is beginning to be realized, and 
the truly intellectual are beginning to honor the brave thinkers 
of the past. 

“ But the Church is as unforgiving as ever, and still wonders 
why any Infidel should be wicked enough to endeavor to 
destroy her power. I will tell the Church why. 

“You have imprisoned the human mind; you have been the 
enemy of liberty; you have burned us at the stake —wasted us 
upon slow fires —torn our flesh with iron; you have covered us 
with chains — treated us as outcasts; you have fil ed the world 
with fear; you have taken our wives and children from our 
arms; you have confiscated our property; you have denied us 
the right to testify in courts of justice; you have branded us 
with infamy; you have torn out our tongues; you have refused 
us burial. In the name of your religion you have robbed us of 
every right; and after having inflicted upon us every evil that 
can be inflicted in this world, you have fallen upon your 
knees, and with clasped hands, implored your God to torment 
us forever. 


THOMAS PAINE. 


549 


“Thomas Paine was one of the intellectual heroes —one of 
the men to whom we are indebted. His name is associated ior- 
ever with the Great Republic. As long 1 as free government 
exists he will be remembered, admired and honored. 

“He lived a long, laborious, and useful life. The world is 
better for his having lived. For the sake of truth he accepted 
hatred and reproach for his portion. He ate the bitter bread 
of sorrow. His friends were untrue to him because he was true 
to himself, and true to them. He lost the respect of what is 
called society, but kept his own. His life is what the world 
calls failure, and what history calls success. 

“ If to love your fellow men more than self, is goodness, 
Thomas Paine was good. 

“If to be in advance of your time, to be a pioneer in the 
direction of right, is greatness, Thomas Paine was great. 

“If o avow your principles and discharge your duty in the 
pr esence of death, i. heroic, Thomas Paine was a hero. 

“At the age of seventy-three death touched his tired heart. 
He died in the land his genius defended—under the flag he 
gave to the skies. Slander cannot touch him now —hatred 
cannot reach him more — He sleeps in the sanctuary of the tomb, 
beneath the quiet of the stars. 

“ A few more years — a few more brave men — a few more rays 
of light, and mankind will venerate the memory of him who 
said: 

* Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can¬ 
not be a true system.’ 

‘ The world is my country, and to do good my religion.’ ” 


In this connection it may be proper to present to the reader 
some of the facts connected with the removal of the bones of 
Paine from his grave at New Rochelle to England. In the year 
1818 William Cobbett, the noted English reformer, writer, and 
speaker, passed several months in this country, and upon his 
return to England, and entirely at his own option, and without 
authority or permission from any source, he caused the bones 
to be removed, after a quiet rest of nine years in the grave. 



550 


THOMAS PAINE, 


Early in the morning of June 12, 1818, two men —unknown in 
the vicinity —with horses and wagon, drove to the grave of 
Paine and immediately set themselves at work in exhuming the 
bones. As soon as they had performed this task the bones were 
removed to the wagon, when they started for New York. Major 
Coutant (still living) was witness of a part of the transaction, 
but was x>owerless to prevent it. 

I: is uncertain what Cobbett’s motive was in taking the bones 
to England. By some it was asserted it was because he thought 
America had not treated the memory of Paine with due respect; 
by others it was said Cobbett imagined the appearance of 
Paine’s bones in E gland would create an excitement that 
might be turned to his own advantage. This much is known; 
when Cobbett was conducting his bookstore, corner of Fleet 
street and Fetter lane, London, he kept those bones on exhi 
bition, and thousands of people saw them when they visited 
his store. They were not fastened together as skeletons usually 
are, but were kept loose and uncovered. 

Cobbett was subsequently elected to a seat in the House of 
Commons, when he discontinued the book trade. His sons par¬ 
tially succeeded him, but they were far inferior to their father in 
intellect and character, and soon run the business out and dis¬ 
continued it. What ultimately became of Paine’s bones, is not 
known. An account of them has been given, that they were 
taken to one of the large potteries of England, where they were 
ground to powder, and mixed with fine clay, which was made 
into trinkets and articles of ornament, which were distributed 
around among the friends and admirers of Paine. How much 
truth there is in this statement is not known. 

If Cobbett’s reason for removing the bones of Paine was 
because the j)eople of America had not bestowed the honor and 
gratitude justly due him in consideration of the important ser¬ 
vices he had rendered, it can at least be seen there was grounds 
for such conclusions. As valuable as Paine’s services had been, 
the writing of the “Age of Reason” alienated from him hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of bigots aud sectarians. This is w r hy the 
immense aid he rendered to a struggling young nation was suf¬ 
fered to sink into comparative forgetfulness. Still the name of 
Paine shall be revered forever. 


HERSCHEL I. 


551 


HERSCHEL I. 


On the 15th of November, 1738, was born at Hanover one of 
the greatest astronomers that any age or nation ever produced 
— William Herschel. His father was a skilful musician, who, 
having six sons, was not able to give them a very complete 
education. They all, however, became excellent musical per¬ 
formers. In time William adopted the profession of musician. 
Before leaving home he took lessons in French and even culti¬ 
vated a taste for metaphysics. He had early in life entered 
one of the bands belonging to the Hanoverian army; but find¬ 
ing no chance of promotion in his own country, in 1759, in 
company with his brother Jacob, he went to England in search 
of employment; but for two or three years he received no 
e couragement, and even suffered great privation. However, 
becoming in turn instructor of a military band at Durham, 
(1761) organist at Halifax (1765) and of a chapel at Bath, (1766) 
his condition was much improved, as his skill was in great 
request at oratorios, public concerts, and reunions of fashion. 
He had, in the meantime, by intense study, learned Latin and 
Italian, and, as preliminary to the theory of music, acquired a 
thorough knowledge of mathematics. 

It appears that he was about thirty years of age before his 
attention was directed to astronomy and optics, in which his 
talents were destined to find their most congenial arena, and 
which were to be the basis of his permanent renown. “ A casual 
view of the starry heavens through a small telescope sufficed 
to rouse his enthusiasm and to kindle the latent ardor of 
genius. He must be an astronomer; he must have a telescope 
of greater power; and, as the price demanded by opticians 
exceeded his resources, he resolved to construct one with his 
own hands. After a multitude of trials and several years of 
persistent application, he completed, in 1774, a reflecting telescope 
of five feet focal length, and, stimulated by his success, did not 
relax his efforts until he obtained one of dimensions four times 


552 


HEESCHEL I. 


greater, with which, in 1779, he began a systematic survey of the- 
sidereal Universe.” 

His well-directed labors and patient and arduous vigils were 
rewarded in March, 1781, by the discovery of a new primary 
planet, which was named by him Georgium Sidus, in honor of 
King George, and is since called Uranus. Besides the renown 
which he acquired by this signal success, lie also received from 
George III. a pension of £400, with the title of private astron¬ 
omer to the King. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, (who awarded him their annual gold medal,) and after¬ 
wards President of that learned body. He then removed to 
Si ugh, near Windsor, and henceforth his abode “ became one 
of the remarkable spots of the civilized world,” — “a name,” 
says Arago, “which the sciences will transmit to the remotest, 
posterity; for there exists no spot on the earth which has been 
rende ed memorable by more numerous and surprising discov¬ 
eries.” His labors were shared by his sister, Miss Caroline 
Herschel, who assisted him in his observations and calculations.. 
After he had made several large telescopes, he at last con¬ 
structed, with pecuniary aid from the king, the most powerfuL 
and gigantic instrument then known— forty feet in length; and 
after four years’ unremitting telescopic labor, he made the- 
most unexpected and important discoveries; the new planet 
Uranus in 1781; its satellites in 1787; two new satellites of 
Saturn in 1789; the rotation and other phenomena of Saturn’s, 
ring, and that of Jui iter’s satellites, and the structure of the 
lunar mountains, being among the principal of his invaluable 
astronomical feats. Over seventy of his memoirs on astronom¬ 
ical subjects are contained in the “Transactions of the Royal 
Society; ” and his papers on the construction of telescopes 
remain unsurpassed even at the present day. 

By moans of his large telescope he was enabled to penetrate 
farther into space than his predecessors, and by his sublime 
spec ulations on the constitution of the nebulae he made some 
approach to a conception of the illimitable extent and variety 
of the celestial phenomena. “In 1803 he discovered the motion 
of the double stars around each other,—the grandest fact in 
sidereal astronomy, —attesting the universal influence of that 
attractive force which binds the members of the solar system* 


HERSCHEL I. 


553 


He soon after announced that the whole solar system is pro¬ 
gressing in the direction of the constellation Hercules. . . . 
His discoveries were so far in advance of his time, they had so 
little relation or resemblance to those of his predecessors, that 
he may be said to have initiated a new era in astronomy, and 
almost to have founded a new science, by revealing the immen¬ 
sity of the scale on which the Universe is constructed.” 

He was knighted, and received the degree of Doctor of Laws 
from the University of Oxford, — honors which he had most 
worthily earned. He was married in 1788, and left one son, Sir 
John, or “ Herschel II.,” noticed hereafter. He died in 1822, at 
the fair old age of eighty-four. 

In the notice of Sir William Herschel’s life and work, it 
would be highly amiss to leave his loving, faithful, and labor¬ 
ious sister with only a passing notice, as above. Carolines 
Herschel was born in Hanover in 1750, twelve years after the 
advent of her illustrious brother. While he was engaged as 
organist at Bath, she came to England in order to reside 
with him. From the commencement of his astronomical pur¬ 
suits until his death she shared his daily labors and nightly 
vigils. And in the intervals < f her work under his direction, 
she observed the heavenly bodies on her own account, and 
inscribed her own name with luminous and indelible characters 
in the records of the grand science which she so enthusiastic¬ 
ally cultivated. She discovered" five, (or, according to some, 
seven) new comets between 1786 and 1797. In 1798, she pub¬ 
lished a valuable “ Catalogue of Five Hundred and Sixty-One 
Stars observed by Flamsteed,” with a correction of Flamsteed’s 
observations. On the death of her brother, she returned to 
Hanover, where, for twenty years longer, she continued to labor 
at her scientific pursuits. In 1828 the Koyal Society voted her 
a gold medal, and she was also an honorary member of the same. 
She died in 1848, at the advanced age of ninety-eight years. 


554 


ETHAN ALLEN 


ETHAN ALLEN. 

Colonel Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, and author 
of “Oracles of Reason,” was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 
the year 1739. He was the eldest of a family of eight chil¬ 
dren. But little is known of his early life. His education was 
very limited; but a superior intellect animated with an ambi¬ 
tion to search diligently every subject that came under his 
notice, made amends, to a great extent, for defective school 
■culture. 

His name is best known as one of the most active of the 
revolutionary heroes. At the beginning of the war he raised a 
company of two hundred and thirty Vermont volunteers. With 
these he surprised the fortress of Ticonderoga, May 10th, 1775, 
demanding its unconditional surrender “in the name of God 
and the Continental Congress.” Forty prisoners and one 
hundred cannon was the result of this daring enterprise. In 
the following September he was taken prisoner while making 
an attack on Montreal, and suffered a cruel imprisonment for 
several years. Soon after the close of the revolution, he issued 
his little work on religion, entitled, “Reason, the only Oracle 
of Man.” This was considered a bold and blasphemous pro¬ 
duction at that time, and he had great difficulty in getting it 
X>rinted. The manuscript remained a long time with a printer 
at Hartford, who lacked the moral courage to publish it. At 
length a man was found who ventured to print it. This man’s 
name was Haswell, of Bennington, Vt. It was issued in 1784. 
A part of the edition soon after its publication was accidentally 
-consumed by fire. It is related that the publi her, Haswell, 
deeming this fire a judgment upon him for having printed such 
an impious work, threw the remainder into the flames, and 
straightway went and joined the Methodist Church. There Tore 
but few copies were then put in circulation. It has since been 
reprinted, and is quite a popular book in modern Liberal 
literature. 


ETHAN ALLEN. 


555 


Col. Allen died of apoplexy in the town of Burlington, Vt., 
on the 12th of February, 1789. He was a brave, adventurous 
soldier, a hero and a patriot whose name will be forever asso¬ 
ciated with the cause of American Independence; he was an 
enemy of oppression and intolerance, a friend of Freethought, 
a stranger to fear, a man of honor and high moral worth, and 
-an —Infidel. His ‘'Oracles of Reason ” appeared several years 
before Paine’s famous “Age of Reason’’ agitated the world. 
The following short selections will suffice to show the style and 
merit of the work: 

“A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the 
institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly con¬ 
sistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth; 
therefore such pretended revelations, as are tendered to us as 
the contrivance of heaven, which do not bear that test, we may 
be morally certain, was either originally a deception, or has 
since, by adulteration become spurious. Reason therefore must 
be the standard by which we determine the respective claims 
of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the 
divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or 
to none at all. So likewise on this thesis, if reason rejects the 
whole of those revelations, we ought to return to the religion 
of nature and reason. Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our 
best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with 
which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or 
prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same 
proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. 
Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first 
divest ourselves of those impediments; and sincerely endeavor 
to search out the truth; and draw our conclusions from reason 
and just argument, which will never conform to our inclin¬ 
ation, interest or fancy; but we must conform to that if we 
would judge rightly. As certain as w r e determine contrary to 
xeason we make a wrong conclusion; therefore, our wisdom is, 
to conform to the nature and reason of things, as well in 
religious matters, as in other sciences. Preposterously absurd 
would it be, to negative the exercise of reason in religious 
concerns, and yet be actuated by it in all other and less occur¬ 
rences of life.” 


556 


ETHAN ALLEN. 


“Most of the human race, by one means or other are pre¬ 
possessed with principles opposed to the religion of reason. In 
these parts of America, they are most generally taught, that 
they are born into the world in a state of enmity to God and 
moral good, and are under his wrath and curse, that the way 
to heaven and future blessedness is out of their power to pursue, 
and that it is incumbent with mysteries which none but the 
priests can unfold, and that we must “ be born again/’ have a 
special kind of faith, and be regenerated; or in fine, that 
human nature, which they call “the old man,” must be de¬ 
stroyed, perverted, or changed by them, and by them new 
modelled, before it can be admitted into the heavenly kingdom. 
Such a plan of superstition, as far as it obtains credit in the 
world, subjects mankind to sacerdotal empire; which is erected 
on the imbecility of human nature. Such of mankind as 
break the fetters of their education, remove such other obsta¬ 
cles as are in their way, and have the confidence publicly to 
talk rational, exalt reason to its just supremacy, and vindicate 
truth and the ways of God’s providence to men, are sure to be 
stamped with the epithet of irreligious, infidel, profane, and 
the like. But it is often observed of such a man, that he ia 
morally honest, and as often replied, what of that? Morality will 
carry no man to heaven. So that all the satisfaction the honest 
man can have while the superstitious are squibbling hell-fire 
at him, is to retort back upon them that they are priest-ridden.” 

Though this work has contributed much to the cause of 
mental enfranchisement, yet its author has become better 
known to fame as a warrior than as a writer. As a literary 
production and an exhaustive expose of the Christian Scriptures, 
the “ Age of Reason ” has superseded the “ Oracles of Reason ,” 
and while it is conceded that the trenchant pen of Thomas 
Paine, the Author Hero, accomplished more for the colonial 
cause than the sword of Washington, a grateful and apprecia¬ 
tive posterity will cherish in sacred recollection the essential 
services of Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


557 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


At Shadwell, Virginia, near the spot which afterwards became 
famous as his residence —Monticello —was born, April 2d, 1743, 
the child who was destined to become not only one of the 
greatest pioneers of American independence, and eventually the 
third President of the United States, but also the very greatest 
of all American statesmen, when true statesmanship alone 
could preserve the 1 fe and husband the resources of the young 
nation. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a man of great force 
of character, and endowed with extraordinary physical strength. 
His mother, Jane Randolph, of Goochland, was descended from 
a British family of great respectability. They had a family 
of eight children, of which Thomas was the oldest. It seems 
that his parents took special care to bestow upon him all the 
advantages of education within their power. When only nine 
years of age he began his classical studies, and at seventeen 
he entered an advanced class at William and Mary College, 
Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia. While on his way 
thither he became acquainted with Patrick Henry, then a bank¬ 
rupt man of business, but who afterwards became the great 
orator of the Revolution. Jefferson was distingu shed at col¬ 
lege for close study, devoting thereto from twelve to fifteen 
hours a day. He made great proficiency n mathematics, and 
to a great extent mastered Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and 
Italian. He then devoted five years to a course of law, and in 
1767 was admitted to the Par. His success in the legal profes¬ 
sion was very remarkable; his fees for tlie first year arm u ng 
to nearly three thousand dollars —a large sum for those rim s 
His public career commenced in 1769, as a member oi the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, in which he had already, while a 
student of law, listened to Patrick Henry’s great speech on the 
Stamp Act. In 1774 he was elected to a convention to choose 
delegates to the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and 
•drafted out for their inspection and instruction his celebrated 


558 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


“Summary View of the Rights of British America,” which* 
though rejected as being too radical by the Convention, was 
subsequently issued by the House of Burgesses. Indeed, after 
being somewhat revised by Edmund Burke, it passed through 
several editions in Great Britain. On the first of June, Jeffer¬ 
son reported to the Assembly the reply of Virginia to Lord 
North’s conciliatory proposition, and on the twenty-first of the 
same month took his seat in the Continental Congress. Here 
he became at once a well-established leader, both as statesman 
and writer. He served faithfully on the most imi ortant com¬ 
mittees, and, among other labors, drew up the reply of Con¬ 
gress to the above proposal of Lord North, and assisted John 
Dickinson in preparing, in behalf of the Colonies, a declaration 
of the cause of taking up arms. 

“The rejection of a final petition to the king having at length 
destroyed all hope of an honorable reconciliation with the 
mother country, Congress, early in the session of 1776, appointed 
a committee to draw up a Declaration of Independence, of 
which Jefferson was made chairman. In this capacity he? 
drafted, at the request of the other members of the committee, 
(Franklin, Adams, Sherman, and R. R. Livingstone,) and re¬ 
ported to Congress, June 28, that great charter of freedom 
known as the ‘Declaration of American Independence,’ which,, 
on July 4th, was adopted unanimously, and signed by every- 
member present except John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. It 
may be doubted if in all history there be recorded so important 
fin event, or if a state paper has ever been framed that has. 
exerted, or is destined to exert, so great an influence on the 
destinies of a large portion of the human race. ‘ The Declara¬ 
tion of Independence,’ says Edward Everett, ‘is equal to any¬ 
thing ever born on parchment or expressed in the visible signs 
of thought.’ . . . ‘The heart of Jefferson in writing it,’ adds 
Bancroft, ‘ and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all human¬ 
ity.’” 

During the Fall ensuing, Jefferson resigned his seat in 
Congress, and also the appointment of Commissioner to France, 
in order to take part in the deliberations of the Virginia 
Assembly. He had already furnished the preamble to a State 
Constitution which had previously been adopted. He was then 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


559> 


engaged for two years and a half on a radical revision of the- 
laws of the commonwealth. He produced, among other reforms, 
the repeal of the laws of entail, the abolition of primogeniture, 
and the restoration of the rights of conscience,— reforms which* 
he believed, would eradicate “every fibre of ancient or future* 
aristocracy.” He also planned and originated a complete system 
of elementary and collegiate education for Virginia. 

The next public service of Mr. Jefferson was the Governor¬ 
ship of Virginia, in which he succeeded Patrick Henry, in 1779- 
He held the office during the most gloomy period of the Revolu¬ 
tion. He declined a reelection in 1781, giving as a reason that 
at that critical time “ the public would have more confidence in 
a military chief.” It was not more than two days after retiring 
from office that his estate at Elk Hill was ravaged, and he and 
his family narrowly escaped being captured by the enemy. 
Jefferson was twice appointed, in conjunction with others, 
minister-plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty of peace with 
Great Britain, — viz., in June 1781, and in November 1782,— but 
was prevented, by circumstances beyond his control, from 
action in either instance. In 1783 he was returned to Congress, 
;.nd reported to that body, from a committee of which he was 
chairman, the Paris Treaty of Peace, of September 3, 1783,, 
acknowledging the independence which had been announced 
in the Declaration of July 4, 1776. He next undertook to pass 
through Congress a bill establishing the present Federal 
system of coinage, and succeeded. At this session he also, 
reported a plan of government for the territory of the United 
States. In 1784, he was appointed minister-plenipotentiary to act 
with Franklin and Adams in negotiating treaties of commerce, 
and amity with foreign powers. In the fo lowing year he 
succeeded Dr. Franklin as resident-minister at Paris. This 
sojourn in France was one of the happiest periods of his life; 
and it was then that he formed that strong predilection for the 
French nation over the English which so conspicuously marked 
his subsequent career. While abroad, he published his famous 
“Notes on Virginia,” relating to the politics, commerce, manu¬ 
factures, etc., of the State, which at once attracted European 
attention, In 1789 he sought and obtained permission to return 
to America, and reached Virginia soon after the election of 


560 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


Washington as first President. He, however, did not approve 
of the Federal Constitution, then recently adopted, because, as 
he said, he did not know whether the good or the bad predom¬ 
inated in it. But after a while he thought better of it, and 
when Washington, in organizing the government, offered him 
the Secretaryship of State, he accepted it. 

Time and space will not allow Ihe recital of the part which 
Jefferson enacted in the fierce struggles, especially during 
Washington’s administration, between the two great political 
parties, the [Republicans and the Federalists. Suffice it to say 
that Jefferson was the leader of the former, and Alexander 
Hamilton, (then Secretary of the Treasury) the chief of the 
latter. The differences between the two rival chiefs, after a 
season of stormy troubles in the Cabinet and throughout the 
country, culminated in 1793, on the last day of which year 
Jefferson retired to Monticello. But at the close of Washing¬ 
ton’s second term he was again called into public life, as tho 
Presidential Candidate of the Bepublican party, John Adams 
being the nominee of the Federalists. Adams was elected 
President; and Jefferson, being the next highest candidate, 
became Vice-President, and, of course, president of the Senate. 
(March 4, 1797.) At the next Presidential election the [Republic¬ 
ans carried the day, and Jefferson was elected President, and 
the afterwards notorious Aaron Burr Vice-President, their terms 
of office to commence March 4, 1801. In 1894 Jefferson was 
re-elected by an electoral vote of 148 to 28. In 1809 he volun¬ 
tarily retired from office, after a prosperous administration of 
eight years. During his term of administration there occurred, 
among others, the following important events: — 

The purchase of Louisiana; 1803. 

The brilliant Mediterranean victories of the American fleets, 
and peace with Morocco and Tripoli; 1803. 

The overland exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark, sent 
out by the President; 1804. 

T e arrest and trial for treason of Aaron Burr; 1807. 

The attack of the British war frigate Leopard on the Amer¬ 
ican frigate Chesapeake, (1807) which led to Jefferson’s famous 
embargo act, and subsequently to the second war with Great 
Britain. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


561 


As President and statesman, Jefferson introduced at least 
two innovations as to the methods of business. Instead of 
opening Congress with a speech, as Washington and Ad .ms 
had done, he preferred a written message, as being more 
democratic. He also initiated the custom of removing incum¬ 
bents from office on the grounds of a difference in political 
opinion. 

James Madison followed him in the Presidential Chair. 
After heartily participating in the inauguration of his frieiid 
a:id successor, Jefferson retired to his country seat, where he 
passed the rest of his life in attention to his private affairs and 
in the exercise of a most liberal hospitality toward friends and 
strangers, among the latter being officers of the British army 
(after 1812) —Daniel Webster,—the Duke of Saxe-Weimar,— 
and especially his dear old friend Lafayette. In 1819 Jefferson 
had taken the chief part in founding the University of Virginia, 
at Charlottesville, near his mansion, and acted as its rector 
until his death. During the stay of Lafayette — (whose arrival 
and departure were grand gala days to the whole neighborhood) 
— there was a sumptuous banquet given in his honor in the 
great room of the University, which was attended by President 
Monroe and the two ex-Presidents, Madison and Jefferson. It 
was a time of unbounded enthusiasm and hilarity. When 
Jefferson was toasted, he handed a written speech to a friend 
to read to the company. In this address occurs the following 
beautiful tribute to the worth and fidelity of that man, who 
more than all other foreigners together, so nobly assisted the 
cause of America, both in war and in peace:— “I joy, my 
friends, in your joy, inspired by the visit of this our ancient 
and distinguished leader and benefactor. His deeds in the War 
of Independence you have heard and read. They are known to 
you, and embalmed in your memories and in the pages of 
faithful history. His deeds in the peace which followed that 
war are perhaps not known to you; but I can attest them. 
When I was stationed in his country, for the purpose of 
cementing its friendship with ours, and of advancing our 
mutual interests, this friend of both was my most powerful 
auxiliary and advocate. He made our cause his own, as in 
truth it was that of his native country also. His influence and 


562 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


connections there were great. All doors of all departments 
were open to him at all times; to me only formally and at 
appointed times. In truth, I only held the nail; he drove it. 
Honor him, then, as your benefactor in peace, as well as in 
war.” 

Seldom had there been a sounder constitution than Jeffer¬ 
son’s. At eighty-two his teeth were all perfect. But he dreaded 
a doting old age. This, however, was not to be his. Death 
in mercy was to save him from that horrible calamity. From 
1822 to 1826 his strength had been gradually giving way. In the 
spring of the latter year his decay became more obvious and 
rapid. In March he was heard to say that he might live till 
midsummer. About the middle of June, as he handed a paper 
to his grandson to read, he said, “Don’jt delay: there is no time 
to be lost.” From that day he was under medical treatment. 
On the 24th of June he had still strength enough to pen a long 
letter in reply to an invitation to attend the fiftieth celebration 
of the Declaration of Independence, on “the gljrious Fourth,” 
at Washington. And this letter strongly shows how sanguine his 
mind was as to the growing “rights of man ” (his words) within 
nine days of his death. In view of his fast-hastening dissolu¬ 
tion he was uniformly calm and resigned, declaring that he 
did not feel the smallest solicitude about the result. Upon 
imagining that he heard a neighboring clergyman in the next 
room he said. “I have no objection to see him as a kind and 
good neighbor;” meaning, as his grandson thought, that he 
did net desire to see him in his professional character. 

“During the third of July he dozed hour after hour, under 
the influence of opiates, rousing occasionally, and uttering a 
few words. It was evident his end was very near; and a fer¬ 
vent desire arose in all minds that he should live until the day 
which he had assisted to consecrate half a century before. He > 
too, desired it. At eleven in the evening Mr. N. P. Trist, the 
young husband of one of his grand-daughters, sat by his pillow 
watching his face, and turning every minute toward the slow- 
moving hands of the clock, dreading lest the flickering flame 
should go out before midnight. ‘This is the Fourth?’ whis¬ 
pered the dying patriot. Mr. Trist could not bear to say, ‘Not 
yet;’ so he remained silent. ‘This is the Fourth?’ again asked 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


563 


Mr. Jefferson in a whisper. Mr. Trist nodded assent. ‘Ah!’ he 
breathed, and an expression of satisfaction passed ove r his 
countenance. Again he sank into sleep, which all about him 
feared w r as the slumber of death. But • midnight came; the 
night passed; the morning dawned; the sun rose; the new day 
progressed, and still he breathed, and occasionally indicated a 
desire by words or look. At twenty minutes to one in the after¬ 
noon he ceased to live. 

“At Quincy, on the granite shore of distant Massachusetts, 
another memorable death-scene was passing on the Fourth of 
July, 1826. John Adams [‘the ablest advocate and champion of 
Independence — the colossus of the Continental Congress ’] at 
the age of ninety-one, had been an enjoyer of existence down 
almost to the dawn of the fiftieth Fourth of July. He voted 
for Monroe in 1820. His own son was President of the United 
States in 1826. . . . On the last day of June, 1826, though 
his strength had much declined of late, he was still well enough 
to receive and chat with a neighbor, the orator of the coming 
anniversary, who called to ask him for a toast to be offered at 
the usual banquet. ‘I will give you,’ said the old man, ‘Inde¬ 
pendence forever!’ Being asked if he wished to add anything 
to it, he replied, ‘Not a word.’ The day came. It was evident 
that he could not long survive. He lingered, tranquil and with¬ 
out pain, to the setting of the sun. The last words that he 
art culated were thought to be, ‘Thomas Jefferson still lives.’ 
As the sun sank below the horizon, a noise of great shouting 
■was heard in the villa e, and reached even the apnrtments in 
which the old man lay. It was the enthusiastic cheers called 
forth by his toast—‘Independence forever.’ Before the sounds 
died away he had breathed his last. The coincidence of the 
death of those two venerable men on the d4y associated with 
their names in all minds did not startle the w'hole country at 
once , on the morning of the next day, as such an event now 
would. . . . But when it became known that the author of 

the Declaration and its most powerful defender, had both 
breathed their last on the Fourth of July, the fiftieth since they 
had set it apart from the roll of common days, it seemed as if 
Heaven had given its visible and unerring sanction to the work 
they had done.” 


564 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


And thus it was that these two grand, old patriots died. 
They were “lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death 
they were not divided.” And, moreover, “they were swifter 
than eagles” in the service of their country; “they were 
stronger than lions” in their fight with England. They were, 
in sooth, the great constructive “giants” of “those days;” — one 
of them duly appreciated during his life, the other after his 
death, and both steadily growing ever since in the estimation 
of all true American patriots and philosophical students of his¬ 
tory everywhere. Of the other Revolutionary fathers no such 
claims to statesmanship is made in the light of “ this distant, 
clear, and equal day ” as in the cases of Jefferson and Adams. 
Eranklin, with all his common sense, science and diplomacy, has 
never been claimed as aught higher than an honest, prudent and 
fearless pleader, committee-man, treaty-maker, and ambassador 
in the service of the young Republic. Washington, with all his 
calm heroism and reserved wisdom, was, after all, but an “Army 
President” —a conservative militaire—, and not by any means 
a great statesman, or pretending to be one. Thomas Paine, 
with all his clarion-notes and bugle-blasts of secession and 
in lependence, is never claimed by his warmest admirers as 
aught but the “author- hero” — the popular doctrinaire of the 
American Revolution. But Jefferson and Adams were statesmen 
in the true sense of the word — real constructive statesmen — who 
established the new order of things on a firm basis, paved the 
way for the possibility of a Madison, a John Quincy Adams, 
and an Andrew Jackson, and did their very best to make 
impossible such a woeful political degeneracy as we have wit¬ 
nessed in our country during the last forty years! And no won¬ 
der, when we consider their fortunate heredity, that our second 
and third Presidents not only struck for American Liberty and 
Independence, but also spent their lives and died their deaths 
as the great apostles of the only true conservators of those 
great blessings, to wit; Education and Virtue. They were not 
“stolid Saxon sheep.” They were “ men of thought and men 
of action .” The blood that bounded through their hearts was 
of that fine old strain which has never yet been “ conquered,” 
partisan falsehood and credulity to the contrary notwithstand¬ 
ing; which, through the long ages of European barbarism, had 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


565 


never succumbed, even for a moment, to Roman, Northman, 
Dane, or Saxon. It was of that “ Ancient Briton” verve which 
had, from remote ages, been nurtured in Druidic hardihood 
and in a deep abiding sense of democratic individuality and 
local liberty; which had successfully defied Julius Cassar and 
Ludus Severus, and rooted out the Roman legions from off the 
face of British earth; which first instituted that “sweet and 
honorable chivalrie” which flourished the most perfectly in the 
not entirely legendary period of Arthur and Merlin; which 
sacredly kept the torches of Liberty, Learning, Independence, 
and a Free Religion burning brightly when all around was 
enveloped in the worse than Egyptian darkness of the Dark, 
Dark Ages; which (spite of the malicious popish lies of the 
Saxon Chronicles) kept Egbert, Alfred, Canute, Harold, and all 
the other ignorant and brutish bandits of those times, ever at 
bay; which survived and bounded up triumphantly from under 
the diabolical “Long Dirk” treachery of the Sassenach; but 
w r hich, when the kindred Norman came, at once and with great 
mutual benefit, naturally affiliated with that old and noble 
consanguineous stock, and thus became the Brito-Norman (so 
long mis-named “Anglo-Saxon” — the meanest of myths) the 
Brito-Norman—the real salvation of Britain Land; which has 
ever since, strongly, and on the whole wisely, guided the inex¬ 
haustible energies and regulated the well-nigh irrepressible 
fractiousness of 

“ The Greater Britain of the Wide Wide World,” 

furnishing, with but very few exceptions, its greatest workers, 
warriors, statesmen, scientists, artists, philosophers, literati, and 
princes of “the three professions;” which, during the latter 
centuries, instinctively felt the need of and sought the New 
World to attain to still more and more of what had ever been 
to it dearer than very life —the self-same old Liberty and Inde¬ 
pendence ; which, after arriving here, went straight to work, in 
"Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, and other “Colo¬ 
nies,” and instituted the spirit of rebellion for a still larger 
meed of the same high privileges, openly conspiring with the 
kindred Gaul to find the means to ensure them; and which, 
(not for the present to come later down through its glorious 


EGG 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


peace and war records to this very day,) furnished the very 
heart and soul, and to a great extent, the body of that immortal 
conclave — the defiant and illustrious signers of the Declaration 
of Independence. May our best Humanity yet supply us, ere 
we utterly perish, with other prophets of Freedom and Virtue 
who may at least be worthy to bear the Presidential cloak—so 
well worn in the public service — of the honored subject of this 
memoir,—the able and honest Thomas Jefferson! 

“When in his prime, Jefferson was six feet two and a half 
inches in height, with a sinewy, well-developed frame, angular 
face, but amiable countenance, and ruddy complexion delicately 
fair. He had deep set light-hazel eyes. . . . He was married 
in F72 to Mrs. Martha Skelton, daughter of John Wales, a 
distinguished Virginia lawyer. She brought him a large dowry 
in lands and slaves, about equal in value to his own property; 
but his liberality and generous living and obligations incurred 
on behalf of a friend clouded his years with pecuniary difficult¬ 
ies, which left him insolvent at his death!” 

Perhaps there were never found finer traits of human 
nature than were exhibited by Jefferson in the celebrated 
“ Adams-Jefferson Reconciliation,” which fully indicated that 
there needed never have been any quarrel at all; in his 
profound grief and sorrow at the death of his wife, and his 
manly and successful endeavor to mollify his bereavement by 
hard and exciting work; in his patriarchal affection and fond¬ 
ness for his children and grandchildren, of whom one daughter 
and ten grandchildren survived him; and in his manly sketch 
— as little egotistic as mock-modest—of what he wished to be 
(a cl was) inscribed on his tombstoneHere was buried 
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, 
of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of 
the Universiiy of Virginia.” 

In his intercourse with others, he was distinguished for his 
affability. His conversation was fluent, imaginative, various, 
and eloquent. “In Europe,” wrote the Due de Liancourt, “he 
would hold a distinguished rank among men of letters.” His 
adroitness in politics and in the management of men has rarely 
been surpassed. He advocated State Rights and a strong Central 
Government, a general scheme of State education, and a plan 


THOMAS JEFFLIiSON. 


567 


for the gradual emancipation of the slaves, whose condition he 
considered a moral and political evil. 

Finally, in religion he was a decided Freethinker. “His 
instincts,” says Bancroft, “all inclined him to trace every fact 
to a general law, and to put faith in ideal truth.” During 
his later years “he watched with deep concern the ceaseless 
movement of the human soul toward freedom and purity. Dr. 
Channing became an interesting figure to him, and he hailed 
with delight the inroads which Channing appeared to be making 
in what he considered the most pernicious of all priestly 
devices, the theology of Calvin. It is hard to say which sur¬ 
passed the other in boiling hatred of Calvinism, Jefferson or 
John Adams. ‘I rejoice,’ writes Jefferson in 1822, ‘that in this 
blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surren¬ 
dered its creed and conscience neither to kings nor priests, the 
genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving.’ In a letter 
to Colonel Pickering he writes of “the incomprehensible jargon 
of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is 
three.” He became even more vehement than this after his 
eightieth year. He spoke of “the blasphemous absurdity of the 
five points of Calvin;” of “the hocus-pocus phantasm of a 
God” created by Calvin, which, “like another Cerberus,” had 
“one body and three heads;” and declared that, in his opinion, 
“it would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all than 
to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.” In a 
letter to Dr. Cooper he says: “In our Richmond there is much 
fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their 
night meetings and praying parties where, attended by their 
priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour 
forth the effus ons of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory 
and carnal as their modesty would permit them to use to a 
mere earthly lover.” “The final and complete remedy, he 
thought, for the ‘fever of fanaticism,’ was the diffusion of 
knowledge.” How apposite these latter remarks to our own 
late “Moody and Sankey revival,” with its Hippodrome evolu¬ 
tion and “bloody” sermons and psychologic seances , all for 
the glory of Jefferson’s above-mentioned “Cerberus” and the 
fooling and robbing of men and women! It almost seems as if 
the third President was actually writing from observation and 


568 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


experience of the spiritual antics and holy excesses which 
have lately figured right in our midst! 

In his “Notes on Virginia,” (p. 46,) Jefferson declares that 
“ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from 
the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is 
wrong.” In the same “Notes,” (pp. 234-239,) while speaking of 
“the different religions received into that State,” he wrote as< 
follows: 

“By our own act of Assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person 
brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of a 
God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more gods than one, 
or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the Scriptures to* 
be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by 
incapacity to hold any office or employment, ecclesiastical, civil, 
or military; on the second, by disability to sue, to take any 
gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and 
by three years’ imprisonment without bail. A father’s right to 
the custody of his own children being founded in law on his 
right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of 
course be severed from him, and put by the authority of a 
court, into more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of 
that religious slavery under which a people have been willing 
to remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the' 
establishment of their civil freedom. The error seems not suf¬ 
ficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as; 
the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. 
But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights,, 
only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience 
we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answer- 
able for them to our God. The legitimate powers of govern¬ 
ment extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But 
it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty 
gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my 
leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be 
relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint 
may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will 
never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his er¬ 
rors, but it will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the 
only effectual agents against error. Give a loose rein to them,. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


569 ; 


they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one 
to their tribunal, in the test of their investigation. They are- 
the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the 
Roman Government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could 
never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulg¬ 
ed at the era of the Reformation, the corruptions of Chris¬ 
tianity could not have been purged away, If it be restrained 
now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones 
encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medi¬ 
cine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls 
are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a 
medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is 
just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems of physics. Galileo 
was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a 
sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a 
trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This 
error, however, at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, 
and Descartes declared that it was whirled round its axis by a 
vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to 
see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should 
all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact, the 
vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of 
gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of 
rea on, than it would be were the government to step in, and 
to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experi¬ 
ment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It 
is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth 
can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion, whom will 
you make your inquisitors ? Fallible men, men governed by 
bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why 
subject it to coercion ? To produce uniformity. But is uniform¬ 
ly of opinion desirable? Introduce the bed of Procrustes, 
then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the 
small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretch¬ 
ing ihe latter. 

“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The 
several sec s perform the office of a censor morum over each 
other. I , uniformity attainable ? Mil ions of innocent men, 
women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, 


570 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not 
advanced one inch toward uniformity, What has been the 
effect of coercion ? To make one half the world fools, and the 
other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over 
the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand 
millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand 
different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that 
thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, 
we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into 
the field of truth. But against such a majority we cannot 
effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only prac¬ 
ticable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must 
be indulged; how can we wish others to indulge it while we 
refuse it ourselves ? But every State, says an inquisitor, has 
■established some religion. No two, say I, have established the 
same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments ? 
Our sister States of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have 
long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experi¬ 
ment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has 
answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion 
is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; 
all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, 
whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, 
and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the 
State to be troubled with it. They do not hang more male¬ 
factors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious 
dissensions than we are. On the contrary, their harmony is 
unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their un¬ 
bounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in 
which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made 
the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, 
is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment 
fair play, and get rid while we m iy of those tyrannical laws. 
It is true we are as yet secured against them by the spirit of 
the limes. I doubt whether the people of this country would 
suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years’ imprisonment 
for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the 
spirit of the people our infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it 
government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may 
alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people 
careless. A single zealot may commence persecution, and bet¬ 
ter men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, 
that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis, 
is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the 
conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not 
"then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for 
support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights 
disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole fac¬ 
ulty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect 
a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which 
shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will 
remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our 
rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.” 

The above remarks are pregnant with meaning. They ought 
to be read in connection with the religious history of the coun¬ 
try since the times of Jefferson, and especially as to the mani¬ 
fest relation which they bear to our present religious troubles, 
brought about by the “Young Men’s Christian Association” 
and the “ God-in-the-Constitution Party,” with their “Bible” 
still foisted on our Public Schools, and their “Sunday” (falsely 
called “Sabbath”) barring the working people of the country 
from worshiping in our Grand Centennial Temples of Industry 
and Art on the only day available to them for such worship! 

Beside his “Notes on Virginia,” and his “Manual of Parlia¬ 
mentary Practice,” (which is still in use among legislative 
bodies In this country,) Jefferson does not seem to have pub¬ 
lished anything of importance. His Memoirs , Correspondence , 
and Private Papers , however, in four volumes, edited by his 
grandson, were published in 1829-30. But that collection has 
been superseded by the publication in 1833-55, in nine volume's, of 
his Writings, Official and Private , augmented from manuscripts 
left by his grandson, purchased by Congress, published by its 
order, and edited by H. A. Washington. From these volumes 
the few following passages (with comments) are offered for the 
careful perusal of the reader:— 

“It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of 
war as much as possible. The practice, therefore, of modern 


V 


572 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

nations, of treating captive enemies with politeness and gener¬ 
osity, is not only delightful in contemplation, but really inter¬ 
esting to all the world, —friends, foes, and neutral.” 

These senten es, among others, he addressed to his nephew 
Peter Carr,_ in college in 1787:— 

“Religion. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in 
favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them on 
any other subject rather than on that of relig'on. On the 
other i and, shake off ail the fears and servile prejudices under 
which weak mi.ids are servilely crouched. Fix Reason firmly 
in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if 
there be one, he must more approve the homage of Reason 
than of blind-folded fear. You will naturally examine, first, 
the relig on of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you 
would Livy or Tacitus. For example, in the Book of Joshua 
we are told the sun stood still for several hours. Were we to 
read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their 
showers of blood, speaking of their statues, beasts, etc. But it 
is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, 
therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been 
inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because 
millions be.ieve it. On the other hand, you are astronomer 
enough to know how contrary it. is to the law of nature. You 
will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a per¬ 
sonage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 
i, Of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin,, 
suspended and reversed the laws of nature at will, and ascetided 
bodily into heaven; and ii, Of those who say he was a man of 
illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mi;:d, who 
set out with pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, 
and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, 
according to the Roman law, which punished the first commis¬ 
sion of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile, or 
death in furca. See this law in Digest, lib. 48, tit. 19, 23, 

3, and Lipsius, lib. 2, de cruce, cap. 2. Do not be frightened 
from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends 
in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to 
virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you will feel in its. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


573 


exercise, and tlie love of others which it will procure you. If 
you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that 
you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will 
be a vast additional incitement; if that Jesus was also a God, 
you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. Your own 
reason is the only oracle given you by Heaven; and you are 
answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the deci¬ 
sion.” From the above it is plainly seen that he carried his 
view of the rights of the individual mind to an extreme, which, 
in that age, had few supporte s in his own country. But 
th.-o.ugh his “doxy” was thus strikingly lax, his moral system 
was strict. The advice he generally gave his nephews on these 
points, when they were college students, might be summed up 
as follows: Perfect freedom of think ng, but no other freedom! 
Ho do right and feel humanely, we are bound: it is an honor¬ 
able bondage, and he is noblest who is most submissive to 
it; but in matters of opinion, it is infamy not to be free. Hear 
what he says about conscience:— 

“Conscience is as much a part of a man as his leg or arm. 
Jt is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, 
as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. 
It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular 
limb of the body.” 

In his advice to his children and nephews, this truth is 
roften repeated:— 

“If ever you find you:self in any difficulty, and doubt how 
to extricate yoursel , do what is right , and you will find it the 
easiest way of get ing out o th difficulty.” 

And again, to Peter Carr:— 

“Give up monov, give u > lame, give up science, give the 
earth itse f, and ail i comains, rath r than do an immoral act. 
And never suppose that ii any possible si uation o' any cir¬ 
cumstances, it is b( st for you to do a dishonorable t .ing.” 

To Dr. Priestley, who had been an object of envenomed attack 
and menaced with expulsion under t .e Aden Law, lie offered 
cordial recognition, and a warm invita ion to visit t ie s at of 
government. “I should claim the right to lodge you,” said the 
President, “should you make such an excursion. ... It is 
with heartfelt satisfaction that in the first moments of my 


574 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


public action, I can hail you with welcome to our land, tender 
to you the homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under 
the protection of those laws which were made for the good and 
wise like you, and disdain the legitimacy of that libel on legis¬ 
lation, which, under the form of a law, was for some time 
placed among them.” 

Other victims of the Alien Law were beyond his reach; but 
some of them, who could be fitly consoled by epistolary notice, 
Kosciusko, Volney, and others, received friendly letters from 
President Jefferson. 

Nearly every other man whom Jefferson singled out for dis¬ 
tinction had suffered, in some special manner, during the recent 
contests. Chief among these was Thomas Paine, who, having 
been first driven from England, then threatened with expulsion 
from France, and warned by the Sedition Law from entering 
the United States, might have been truly described, before the 
fourth of March, 1801, as “the man without a country.” 
Enriched though he had been by the gratitude of America, he 
had been living in Paris for some time past in comparative 
poverty, his American property being little productive in the 
absence of the owner. A gallant, high-bred act it was in 
Jefferson not to shrink from the odium of recognizing the claim 
which Thomas Paine had to the regards of a Republican Presi¬ 
dent. The ocean, for some years past, had not been a safe 
highway for a man whom both belligerents looked upon as an 
enemy; and Paine had, in consequence, expressed a wish for a 
passage home in a naval vessel. The first national ship that 
sailed for France after Mr. Jefferson’s inauguration carried a 
letter from the President to Mr. Paine, offering him a passage 
in that vessel on its return. “I am in hopes,” he wrote, “that 
you will find us returned generally to sentiments worthy of 
former times. In these it will be your glory to have steadily 
labored, and with as much effect as any man living.” This 
must have been comforting to poor Paine —Paine, the benefac¬ 
tor of mankind, who wrote “The Crisis” and “Common Sense,” 
who conceived the planing-machine and the iron bridge, who 
“ concocted ” the “ Rights of Man,” and “ perpetrated ” the “Age 
Reason,” which latter work, by the bye, differed from other 
deistical works only in being bolder and honester, and which 


THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


575 


contained not a position which Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson 
himself, or Theodore Parker would have dissented from. And 
Jefferson knew that, for all his venial faults, Paine loved the 
truth for its own sake; that he stood by what he conceived to. 
be the truth when all the world around him reviled it; and 
that he doubtless spoke the truth when he declared that his 
main purpose in writing even the “Age of Reason” was to 
“inspire mankind with a more exalted idea of the Supreme 
Architect of the Universe.” 

Of the leading principles of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,” 
Jefferson remarked that they were “ the principles of the peo¬ 
ple of the United States.” 

These extracts we shall close with the following acute obser¬ 
vation on the Press, which Jefferson made to Paine in 1787, the 
truth of which every citizen of the United States who has dis- 
crimincitely glanced over the newspapers of our country — espe¬ 
cially of our cities —during the last few years, can attest: “The- 
licentiousness of the press produces the same effect which the 
restraint of the press was intended to do. If the restraint pre¬ 
vents things from being told, the licentiousness of the press 
prevents things from being believed when they are told.” 

The following lines from Tennyson fittingly apply to our 
grand moral hero — Thomas Jefferson:— 

“ Such was he: his work is done. 

But while the races of mankind endure. 

Let his great example stand 
Colossal, seen of every land, 

And kept the soldier firm, the statesman pure; 

Till in all lands and thro’ all human story 
The path of duty be the way to glory: 

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame 
For many and many an age proclaim 
At civic revel and pomp and game. 

And when the long-illumined cities flame. 

Their ever-loyal, honest leader’s fame. 

With honor, honor, honor to him, 

Eternal honor to his name.” 


576 


CONDORCET. 


CONDORCET. 

The Revolution in France was the arena in which was fought 
the terrible battle involving the question whether Europe was to 
be ruled for a century by Christianity or Infidelity. The Giron¬ 
dists were the true Freethinkers of that age. With their heroic 
death disappeared the last barrier to despotism — bleeding France 
fell a victim to empire and gilded chains. Condorcet was the off¬ 
spring of the Girondists, the successor of Voltaire. H> was one 
of the epoch-men of the eighteenth century, one of the leaders 
in the literary shocks of the great Encyclopaedic warfare. Vol¬ 
taire has been termed the Apostle of Deism in France. But he 
may be more properlv considered the Christ, and Condorcet the 
St. Paul of French Freethought. Amongst the whole of the 
heroes of that terrible onslaught of passion, known as the 
French Revolution, none reflected greater honor on F ance or 
the cause of civil and mental liberty, both by his literary 
triumphs and many manly virtues, than Condorcet, one of the 
most daring and philosophical of the Girondists, and most bril¬ 
liant of the great Encyclopaedists. 

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat was born at Ribemont, 
in Picardy, on the seventeenth of September, 1743. His parents 
were noble, but not rich. His father, the scion of an aristo¬ 
cratic family, and an officer in the army, dying early, left his 
.son to be educated under the guardianship of his brother, ihe 
Bishop of Lisieux, a celebrated Jesuit. It is sia ed that his 
mother, a superstitious Catholic, in one of her fanatical whims, 
offered up her son at the shrine of the Virgin Mary. The man¬ 
ner in which this was performed is not related, but it is a no o- 
rious fact that the young Condorcet went clothed in girl’s 
•attire, and had only the companionship of girls until his 
twelfth year. This < epriva ion of exercise and boyish s or 
may account for the peculiarity of his muscular devclopmei.. 
his head and body being too large for his legs. He became 
•entirely unfitted for fatigue or strong exercise, and through life 
retained the tenderness of a delicate damsel. 


CONDORCET. 


577 


He entered the Jesuit Academy at Rheims in 1775, where he 
remained for three years. He was then transferred to the Col¬ 
lege of Navarre, in Paris, where he soon became the most dis¬ 
tinguished scholar. His friends expected him to enter the 
priesthood. They did not know that he had adopted Deism in 
his seventeenth year. 

Upon leaving College at the age of nineteen, he published a 
series of mathematical works. These established his fame and 
induced the Academy of Sciences to choose him for their Assist¬ 
ant Secretary. In 1770 he and D’Alembert made a tour together 
through Italy, visiting the Sage of Ferney for several weeks. 
Voltaire was delighted with Condorcet, who, upon his return to 
Paris, became the literary agent of the great leader. 

He was made one of the forty of the Academy of Sciences 
in 1782. The next year his faithful friend, D’Alembert, died, and 
left him the whole of his wealth. He also received an addi¬ 
tional accession of riches upon the death of his uncle during 
the same year. Upon taking possession of his inheritance he 
married the sister of General Grouchy. This lady was consid¬ 
ered one of the most beautiful women of her time, and in the 
.first years of the new regime she shared with Madame de Stael 
the homage of Paris. She was an educated Atheist — in fact 
was somewhat celebrated as an authoress. 

During the American struggle for independence, Condorcet, 
with his fellow Infidels, secured for the United States the assist¬ 
ance of the French Government. He shared the extreme 
republican views of Thomas Paine, with whom he corresponded. 
In 1791 he was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly. 
The next year he became President by a majority of one hun¬ 
dred votes. Although a Marquis himself, he urged the burning 
of ail the pafen s of nobility. With Paine, also a member of 
the same Legisla ive body, he took a conspicuous part in the 
trial of the king, making a speech against the punishment of 
•death fully equal to Paine’s on the same occasion. 

For this he was impeached and doomed to death. His friends 
provided for his escape. They found him an asylum with a 
Madame Vernet, who upon the simple assurance that he was a 
.good and virtuous man, and without wishing to pry into his 
secrets or name, undertook to conceal him for a time. Here 


578 


CONDORCET. 


he was obliged to remain without money or books, and unvis- 
iled by wife or friends. 

La Guillotine was now the sanguinary sovereign of Franco. 
All through the dreary days the ghastly, clotted axe rose and 
fell like some unglutted monster upon the Place de Revolu¬ 
tion. Eight thousand condemned persons in the prisons of 
Paris awaited their places in the death tumbrils wh'ch uninter¬ 
ruptedly rumbled along the streets with fresh freights for the 
scaffold. Improvements were made in the hideous machine of 
death, which caused it to work faster, and prevented the axe 
from losing its edge by the sundering of so many necks. “It 
works well,” triumphantly shouted the applauding terrorists^ 
‘the heads fall like poppy heads.” 

Condorcet, realizing that his benefactress harbored him at 
the hazard of her life, resolved to escape. This he did, not¬ 
withstanding the precaution taken by his friends for his close 
confinement. Appealing to some of his friends in vain for 
assistance, he fled to some quarries, where he remained from 
the fifth to the seventh of April, 1794. Hunger at last drove 
him to the village of Clamart. His aristocratic bearing and 
white and undisfigured hands betrayed him as one of the 
nobility. He had ordered twelve eggs in his omelet at the hos¬ 
telry where he stopped for refreshment. This was considered 
treason against the equality of man. His passport was demand¬ 
ed. He could produce only a scrap of paper scrawled over with 
Latin epigrams. This was conclusive proof against him. He 
was heavily ironed to two officers and started on the march to 
Paris. Arriving at Bourg-la-Reine the first evening, he was 
deposited in the jail of the town. In the morning he was 
found a corpse. He had taken a poison of great force which 
he habitually carried in a ring. 

As soon as prudent after his death the Committee of Public 
Instruction undertook the charge of publishing the whole of 
his works. The greatest of these is considered his “ Historical 
Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind.” His “Letters of 
a Theologian,” created an astounding sensation when they 
appeared — their light, graceful style, concealed irony, their 
crushing retort, and fiery sarcasm, causing them 1o be taken 
for the work of Voltaire. They made priests laugh at their 


CONDORCET. 


579 


Attic wit and incongruous similes. He composed admirable 
eulogies on Buffon, D’Alembert, Franklin and others. He 
immortalized the heroes of human rights as they fell, and ever 
awake to the call of duty, nobly did he help push on the cause. 

He performed an important part in the great Encyclopae¬ 
dia, which gave to Christianity its greatest shock of consterna¬ 
tion, and which shook priestcraft on its throne. Its effects 
have not yet ceased. As a geometer he stands high in the 
second rank. His character was noble and benevolent. In his 
works and fragmentary essays he opposed the idea of a God, 
and taught the supremacy of science and mathematical princi¬ 
ples in education. He associated the progress of art with the pio- 
gress of man, advocated sanitary arrangements which he prophe¬ 
sied would extend the longevity of the race, and announced tie- 
possibility and ultimate adoption of a universal language. 

Like a true philosopher and Atheist he encountered his vol¬ 
untary and violent end with a firmness which the Stoics of 
antiquity might have envied. His last writing was his will, 
written under the presentiment of an immediate death. It is 
quite short, and written on the fly-leaf of a “History of Spain.’ 
In it occurs the following: “Should it be necessary for my 
child to quit France, she may count on protection from my 
Lord Stanhope and my Lord Daer. In America, reliance may 
be placed on Jefferson, and Bache, the grandson of Franklin. 
She is, therefore, to make the English language her first 
study,” 

Says M. Arago of the last epistle oi Condorcet: “In the 
pages then written, I behold everywhere the lefleetion of an 
elevated mind, a feeling heart, and a beautiful soul. I will 
venture to say, that there exists in no language anything better 
thought, more tender, more touching, more sweetly expressed 
than Condorcet’s last Will and Testament.” These lines, so 
limpid and so full of unaffected delicacy, and his placid, volun¬ 
tary departure from life in anticipation of the bloody guillotine, 
fitly characterized the closing career of the noble and tender 
and true-hearted Condorcet —a man of illustrious genius, and 
exquisite sensibility, of an elevated mind and a spotless reputa¬ 
tion. 


580 


GOETHE. 


GOETHE, 

The greatest poet-philosopher of any age or country, was 
born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, August 28, 1749. His father was 
Imperial Councilor, of a stern, obstinate, and somewhat pedan¬ 
tic character, but an upright and worthy man. His maternal 
grandfather was a person of note and chief magistrate of the 
city of Frankfort. “ His mother was genial, warm-hearted, and 
of a singularly bright and happy disposition. She says of her¬ 
self, ‘ I always seek out the good that is in people, and leave 
what is bad to him who made mankind, and knows how to 
round off the corners.’ Goethe says in one of his poems that 
from his father he derived his earnestness of purpose, and 
from his mother his happy disposition and his love of story¬ 
telling.” 

He was a very precocious child. And his great and varied 
powers must have been eminently developed by the circum¬ 
stances with which his childhood was surrounded. His “many- 
sidedness ” also, was unquestionably attributable, in no small 
degree, to the influence exerted on his mind by the various 
events and experiences of his very early life. Early in his 
seventh year, for instance, the terrible Lisbon earthquake 
occurred, (November 1st, 1755,) and filled his mind wi.h per¬ 
plexity and doubt. What he had been taught respecting the 
“goodness of God” utterly vanished in view of that dreadful 
and shocking phenomenon, or, as some one has character¬ 
ized it, 

“ That heinous, devilish butchery by God,— 

Caught in the very act;—that heavenly crime, 

Which, for some high , wise , and mysterious purpose , 

Emptied on Earth one vial prepared for Hell!” 

“It was in vain,” he says, “that my young mind strove to 
recover itself from these impressions; the more so as the wise 


GOETHE. 


581 


and learned in Scripture themselves could not agree upon the 
view which should be taken of the event.” 

Scarcely had he reached his tenth year when Frankfort was 
occupied by the French troops. (This was during the Seven 
Years’ War.) Indeed the French king’s lieutenant was quar¬ 
tered in the very house of the poet’s father. Goethe was thus 
brought into contact with new characters, became acquainted 
with the French theater, and began to write French plays, all 
this, however, ultimately resulting in his contemptuous rejec¬ 
tion of the canons of the French school. 

In 1761 the French troops quitted Frankfort, and his regular 
studies were resumed. He learned to read English and Hebrew, 
and composed a poem on Joseph and his brethren. His educa¬ 
tion, until he was sixteen, was carried on at home, under the 
superintendence of his father and the inspiration of his only 
sister Cornelia, whom it was his rare happiness to find not 
merely an object of his tenderest affection, but one who shared 
his tastes and cordially sympathized with his poetic aspirations. 

In October, 1765, he commenced his collegiate studies at 
Leipsic. There he composed his poems, ‘‘Humors of a Lover,” 
and “The Fellow Sinners.” In 1768 he left Leipsic for Frank¬ 
fort. In 1770, after a season of ill-health at home, he repaired 
to Strasburg University, to complete his law studies. Here he 
became acquainted with, and influenced by, the already distin¬ 
guished Herder, who directed his attention to the Hebrew poets, 
and to Ossian and Shakspere. 

“During his stay at Strasburg he also became acquainted 
with Frederica, with whom he fell passionately in love. She 
was the daughter of Herr Brion, pastor of Sesenheim. . . . 

Goethe pleased himself with likening Herr Brion to the Yicar 
of Wakefield, Frederica to Sophia, and the elder sister to 
Olivia. On his return to Strasburg it was understood that he 
was the accepted lover of Frederica; although it is probable 
that they were not formally betrothed. He afterwards left her, 
because, as his friends suggest, his love was not strong enough 
to justify marriage. Alluding to some of his earlier love-pas- 
sages, he says, ‘Gretchen h d been taken from me, Annchen 
had left me; but now [in the case of Frederica] for the first 
time I was guilty; I had wounded to its very depths one of the 


582 


GOETHE. 


most beautiful and tender of hearts. And that period of gloomy 
repentance, deprived of the love which had so strengthened 
me, was agonizing, insupportable.” 

In 1771 Goethe took the degree of Doctor of Laws. He had 
studied law in accordance with his father’s wishes, simply. 
But the bent of his mind had ever been in quite another direc¬ 
tion. Indeed, he seems, even in youth, never to have lost sight 
of that universal self-culture which was one of the great aims 
of his life. He studied not only poetry, but the languages, crit¬ 
icism, art, science, and philosophy, and all with an unexampled 
impartiality and success. 

In his degree year, lovingly urged thereto by Cornelia, he 
composed one of his most celebrated works, “ Gotz von Ber- 
lichingen,” which produced a great sensation in the literary cir¬ 
cles of his country. Three years later appeared his “Sorrows of 
Young Werther,” which excited a still greater and more uni¬ 
versal admiration. Men of every class and every na ion were 
alike fascinated by it, and the author acquired European renown. 
Napoleon, while in Egypt, read it through several times. Its 
fame extended even to China. “Werther,” says Carlyle, “is 
but the cry of that dim-rooted pain under which all thoughtful 
men of a certain age were languishing; it paints the misery, 
it passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice, all 
over Europe, loudly and at once respond to it. True, it pre¬ 
scribes no remedy; for that was a far different, far harder enter¬ 
prise, to which other years and a higher culture were required; 
but even this utterance of pain, even this little, for the present, 
is grasped at, and with eager sympathy appropriated in every 
bosom.” 

In 1775, the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar, attracted by 
Goethe’s fame, invited him to spend some time at his Court. 
A life-long friendship was the result. At Weimar he became 
acquainted with such distinguished men as Wieland, Herder, 
Musaeus, Knebel, and Seckendorf. “ Wieland, who repeatedly 
calls Goethe a ‘godlike creature,’was captivated by him at first 
sight. In a letter written soon after their first interview, he 
says, ‘ How I loved the magnificent youth as I sat beside him 
at the table! All I can say is this: since that morning my soul 
is as full of Goethe as a dew-drop of the morning sun.’ Knebel 


GOETHE. 


583 


says, ‘ He rose like a star in the heavens: everybody worshiped 
him, especially the women.’^ Goethe wholly abandoned him¬ 
self to the new excitement. The Duke and he were constantly 
together, and for a time tasted the sweet and the bi'ter of the 
wildest frolics and the most fool-hardy dissipation. It is need¬ 
less to say that such a mind as Goethe’s could not long be 
satisfied with such a life. “The want to be once more among 
simple people and lovely scenes drove him away from Weimar 
to Waldeck. Amid the crowded tumult of life he ever kept his 
soul sequestered; and from the hot air of society he broke 
impatiently away to the serenity of solitude.” But he was soon 
called back to Weimar by the Grand Duke, and in June, 1776, 
made “Privy Councilor of Legation,” with a salary of 1,200 
thalers; and the Duke thereupon wrote to Goethe’s father, 
saying that the appointment was a mere formality, and adding, 
“Goethe can have but one position — that of my friend: all 
others are beneath him.” 

The poet now seriously resumed his studies. The first result 
was that finest modern specimen of the Greek tragedy, “Iphi- 
genia at Tauris,” first written in prose, but afterwards turned 
into verse. In 1786 he visited Italy, incognito. He was en¬ 
chanted with Venice. He then passed through several noted 
cities on his way to Borne, where he remained four months, 
and whence he visited Naples, Pompeii, and the ruins of Pses- 
tum. Wherever he wen", he was, of course, intensely suscepti¬ 
ble to the beauties and sublimities of nature and of art, and 
exceptionally receptive to their plastic influences. His “Italian 
Journey” gives a charming account of what he saw T and heard. 

In June, 1788, he returned to Weimar. And now comes the 
great crisis of his life. “ In the autumn of that year he first be¬ 
came acquainted with Christiane Vulpius, a young woman in 
humble life, whom he afterwards married. She had presented 
him a petition entreating him to procure some position for her 
brother, a young author, then living at Jena. Goethe was greatly 
smitten with her beauty, naivete, and sprightliness. His liaison 
with her gave rise to much scandal, on account of the disparity 
'of station ; and the scandal was not lessened when, many years 
later, (1806) he performed an act of tardy justice in marrying 
her. She had, (1789,) borne him a son, August von Goethe, to 


584 


GOETHE. 


whom the Duke of Saxe-Weimar stood godfather. After this 
event Goethe took Christiane, wit'h her mother and sister, to 
live with him in his own house; and he appears always to have 
regarded the connection as a marriage. His conduct in relation 
to this affair was, however, a source of mortification and deep 
regret to many of his admirers. . . . ‘Nothing has stood so 
much in the way of a right appreciation of his moral character, 
nothing has created more false judgments on the tendency of 
his writings, than this half-marriage.’ ” It is said, however, 
that his devoted Christiane, who adored his very name, and 
who could never be brought to consider herself as aught but 
his humble, idolatrous, and loving servant, herself rejected his 
offers of marriage on the ground of the eternal disparity of 
position, as it seemed to her, between her little self and the 
illustrious traveler, the world-renowmed poet, and the councilor 
and intimate friend of the Grand Duke. It is even said, and 
with every appearance of truth, that she had declared that her 
love for him w T as too great to ever allow her to appear to 
degrade him by marrying him, — that she wished to remain as 
his humble but loving devotee, — and that, if there was any 
blame at all in the matter, it was her own fault that the 
marriage ceremony had been so long delayed. 

Space will not allow r more than a passing notice of how 
Goethe manifested the most reckless courage during the cam¬ 
paign of 1792 against France —how he returned, nevertheless, 
thoroughly disgusted with that war in particular and with 
military life in general —how he successfully used his great 
influence to get his brother-poet Schiller appointed to the chair 
of history in the University of Jena, —and how these “twin 
sons of Jove,” as their countrymen delighted to call them, who 
had nothing in common but their transcendent genius, graduated 
into pleasant acquaintance, and then into noble, enduring, and 
mutually beneficial friendship and correspondence, of rare 
interest and value to all lovers of literature. Suffice it here to 
mention the most important of Goethe’s works not already 
adverted to. In 1774 he published “Clavigo;” in 1788, “Eg- 
mont,” a tragedy; in 1790, “Tasso; ” in 1795, “Wilhelm Meister’s 
Apprenticeship;” in 1796-7, “Hermann and Dorothea;” in 1804, 
“Eugenie;” in 1806, the first part of “Faust,” the great work 


GOETHE. 


535-' 


of his life; in 1899, “Elective Affinities;” in 1819, the “West- 
Eastern Divan;” in 1821, “Wilhelm Meister’s Traveling Years:” 
in 1830, the second part of “Eaust.” He had revolved the 
subject of “ Faust ” in his mind for more than thirty years. 
But this long delay was not fruitless. “The great poet has, 
indeed, embodied in this work the results of his nature and 
infinitely varied experience, with his ripest, richest, and pro- 
foundest thoughts; the whole being wrought out with admir¬ 
able skill, and everywhere illumined, so to speak, with passages 
of the most exquisite poetry, touched in turn every chord of 
the human heart. Without endorsing the enthusiastic praise of 
some of Goethe’s admirers, who have pronounced “Faust” to* 
be unqualifiedly ‘the greatest poem of modern times,’ we may 
safely say that it is one of the most wonderful productions of 
genius to be found in the whole compass of literature.” The 
second part of this magnificent poem, however, has enjoyed far 
less popularity than the first part; and by the great majority 
of critics it is considered to be decidedly inferior to it. In his 
“Elective Affinities,” the aim of the author, it would seem, is 
to inculcate the doctrine that the attachments between the 
sexes are governed, like chemical affinities, by fixed inevitable 
laws, which can no more be successfully opposed than the 
decrees of fate can be resisted. 

Goethe continued to write until within a few days of his 
death, which took place at Weimar, March 22, 1832, in the 
eighty-third year of his age. 

Everybody knows how eminently handsome he was — tall, 
graceful, and well-proportioned, — every inch a godlike man. 
“That accordance of personal appearance with genius,” says 
Heine, “which we ever desire to see in distinguished men, was 
found in perfection in Goethe. His outward appearance was 
just as imposing as the word that lives in his writings. Even 
his form was symmetrical, expressive of joy, nobly proper- 
tioned; and one might study the Grecian art upon it as well as 
upon an antique. . . . His eyes were calm as those of a god.. 
It i * the peculiar characteristic of the gods that their gaze is 
ever steady, and their eyes roll not to and fro in uncertainty. 

. . . The eye of Goethe remained in his latest age just as 
divine as in his youth.” 


’586 


GOETHE. 


His was that wonderful depth and myriad-sidedness of nature 
about which there would naturally cluster the most varying and 
contradictory opinions. Of the truth of the following proposi¬ 
tions, however, there can be no reasonable doubt: — 

“ He appears to have always felt for every form of actual suf¬ 
fering a true and ready sympathy, which he manifested rather 
by acts than by words.” 

But “it was one of his marked peculiarities that he enter¬ 
tained a distrust and. dislike of all abstractions, and he had 
little or no sympathy with mere ideas or ideal systems.” Hence, 
“he felt no interest in democracy, because to him democracy 
was an abstraction.” 

Hence also, “he disliked politics,” as such,—and never felt 
that he had any vocation for it. His genius lay in a totally 
different direction. 

Hence, moreover, “ he refused to recognize a Deity that was 
above and distinct from the World,” and “did not hold, with 
the Platonists or Christians, that mankind have fallen from an 
ideal or divine perfection, after which they must continually 
strive if they would be restored.” 

His moral creed may be thus briefly summed up: “Every¬ 
thing that is natural is right;” in other words, “Nothing is 
really wrong except what is unnatural.” We accordingly find 
him quoting with apparent approbation the saying of Thraseas, 
— “He who hates faults or vices hates men,” which, says Mr. 
Lew r es, “was just the sort of passage to captivate him.” But 
we must never forget that such maxims were safe in the head, 
heart, and life of Goethe, as his perception of moral as well as 
esthetic beauty was so vivid and intense. If others have turned 
the sweets of such doctrines into gall —their high salvatory 
sense into their own damnation, at their own doors and on their 
own heads be the sin. “ To the beautiful everything is beau¬ 
tiful.” 

Lastly, Goethe was a man of rare sincerity. There was not 
a thread of hypocrisy or dishonesty in his nature, which was 
rich and full to overflowing with the most generous and noble 
qualities that ever permeated and adorned a son of man. 

The following estimate of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as 
poet and philosopher, and above all, as the Kepresentative 


GOETHE. 


587 


Modern Man, (written expressly for this work) is from the pen 
of a scholarly admirer, who, of all Americans; we venture to 
say, knows best and appreciates at his truest worth 

“The Artist militant. 

Who led mankind from gray philosophies 
And weary gropings in the chilly mist, 

Back to the busy, sober, noontide light. 

And opened human eyes 
And bade them gaze with trust 
Upon the world their home.” 

It is only as we pass far beyond a mountain range that the 
-comparative height of its peaks appears. So it has been said 
of Goethe, that as the time widens between him and the suc¬ 
ceeding generations, it brings out more clearly his immense 
height and breadth, and presents him as the most important 
and enduring, because the most representative and creative 
man of his century, and indeed of our whole modern life and 
world. 

As a poet his rank has become established as one of the 
great interpreters and embodiers of human nature, worthy to 
stand as the last of the line in which only Homer, Yirgil, 
Dante and Shakspere can be properly placed. This position has 
become his as the result of great and peculiar natural endow¬ 
ments of body and mi d, seconded by the broadest learning 
and culture, and sustained by indomitable industry and perse¬ 
verance. 

He was born, and lived, moreover, at a period and in a country 
which furnished a world-wide field for the exercise of his wonder¬ 
ful powers, and helped to make him the representative man of 
the new epoch of human life and emotion that was born into 
the world at nearly the same time with him. 

The bearing of this last remark will appear by recalling the 
fact that each of the great poets of our race, above mentioned, 
became such, because they flourished at what may be called 
the formative periods of their peoples and languages; and that 
from these poets, and to a great extent through and because 
<of them, new states of mind and feeling came into the world, 


588 


GOETHE. 


out of which grew the Literatures, Civilizations, and Politics 
of Greece, of the Roman Empire, of Italy, and of England. 

Goethe was also born at the opening of a new era, a great 
formative period, not only of the German peoples and lan¬ 
guage, but of Europe and of all Modern Civilization. In the 
same view, his birth-place and residence are noteworthy. He 
first saw the light at Frankfort, an old half-medieval town of 
middle Germany, near the centre of Euro; e, where the old and 
the new were brought before the boy whose piercing eyes had 
the poetic faculty of giving as well as receiving light. 

His youth was spent in studies at neighboring German cities, 
and particularly Strasburg and Leipsic. 

After November 1775, Weimar became his residence for the 
remainder of his life, from whence he made visits to other parts 
of Germany and to Italy. Middle Germany in the center of 
Europe was his home, and around him he gradually drew, and 
worked into his own life, the culture and soul-life of Germany, 
of Europe, and we may almost say of the World. All human, 
nature and culture found its synthesis in him, as the clearest 
and most universal man of the modern world. 

He lived in an age of change, of social revolutions and con¬ 
vulsions. None felt or realized the discords more clearly than 
he, but he alone of his age had the strength of heart and brain 
to pass peacefully and healthfully into the new world, then a 
lava-burnt and barren island, end to live there, quietly clothing 
it with flowers and harvests, and peopling it with the children 
of his poetic soul. 

By reason of this complete, victorious and fruitful transition 
his life has become typical, so that he stands forth as the great¬ 
est, wisest, and deepest Poet and Prophet of reconstructive Lib¬ 
eralism. His works, wonderful as they are as works of Art, 
have attained new importance as revelations of a life and state 
of mind, that mean at once emancipation, and also cheerful, 
happy, useful reconstruction. 

To justify this view by the details of the Poet’s life and works 
cannot be done here. We can only refer to the Biographies in 
German and English, such as those of Lewes and Yiehoff, and 
the criticisms of Carlyle, Emerson, Austin, Calvert, Duntzer, and 
others; but above all, would we urge an acquaintance with tliesr 


GOETHE. 


589 


Poet’s works, especially his minor Poetry, of which unfortu¬ 
nately but partial and very imperfect translations have appeared. 
-Every Liberal should, if possible, become acquainted with the 
German language so as to be within reach of the aid, comfort, and 
inspiration of which his works and life are a constant source. 

Of the life itself, so long, busy, and useful, we may note but 
the opening: The child was the “father of the man,” and soon 
develop d the penetration, veracity, and synthetic power that 
made him master of himself, and of the chaos-world within his 
.reach. 

He began to shake off Theology when but a child. The most 
terrible events, instead of prostrating his intellect, aroused it 
to inquiry. At six years of age, (1755) when all Europe trem¬ 
bled at the Lisbon Earthquake, in which thousands of human 
beings were crushed as so many flies, he suspected that the 
government of a personal God of infinite goodness and mercy 
was a misapprehension of the facts of the world. When this 
Thunder-God was placated by “frightful groans and prayers,” 
the boy rebelled against the anthropomorphic God upon which 
the religion of his family and friends rested. 

He was still practical, and to test this Theology he sought 
its God with prayers and altars and means of grace. His 
veracity was too great to be deluded with answers that came 
from his own liea 1, and these efforts were abandoned. 

The boy was sot to reading the Bible in Hebrew, and the 
same invincible veracity made trouble. 

He says, “The contradiction between the actual, or the pos¬ 
sible, and tradition forcibly arres ed me. I often posed my 
tutors with the Sun s anding on Giheon, and the Moon in the 
valley of Ajalon, not to mention other incongruities and impos¬ 
sibilities.*’ 

The B b e was dangerous to his orthodoxy, but stimulated 
his love of Poetry and History. 

I:i th" outer wo;Id he was an admirer of the career and 
charac er of Frederick the Great; and learned to frequent he 
French Theater which the war had brought near him. Thereby 
he was led to take lessons in French Literature and Art, and 
in World-history. Thus closed an eventful, happy, and variously 
^educated boyhood. 


590 


GOETHE. 


The youth in his studies away from home thoroughly com¬ 
pleted his emancipation from Theology and all its churches 
and forms. Never during his life did he have relation to or 
trouble about them. They were wholly in the past to him 
His emancipation was so perfect that he ceased to strive or 
deny or oppose. He was reconciled to the Past as the material 
out of which he could help a better Future to grow. As he 
says he was no longer an anti-Christian but simply not a Chris¬ 
tian -(ein nicht-Christ nicht ein wieder-Christ). 

The greater part of those who pass out from Theologic 
beliefs do so only to meet with some kind of Theosophy or Spir¬ 
itualistic metaphysics, in which their lives are dreamed away 
until the second childhood reduces them to Theology again. 
Goethe lived in an age and country in which metaphysics were 
in their glory, but his objective, realistic veracity saw through 
the haze of their sentimentality and meaningless words. He 
could not be imposed upon by any cloud-world. He cut right 
down to hard pan, determined to base his life upon what man¬ 
kind do or can know instead of what they cannot or do not. 
He studied in the School of the French Encyclopedists, and no> 
iconoclast, before or after the French Revolution, accepted the 
results of Science more unreservedly than he. Prior to his 
removal to Weimar at the age of twenty-six (1775) his student 
life was in harmony with the rebellion of his age against the 
Past and its religious and social traditions. He became the 
leader in the “Storm and Stress,” (Sturm und Drang) period of 
German Literature, and as such gave the world “Gotz,” “Wer- 
ther,” “Prometheus,” the earlier parts of “Faust,” and those 
exquisite lyrics of his youth beaming with love and liberty. He 
of all men was found the most able to give voice to the oppres¬ 
sion that seemed to rest upon every heart, or as his “Tasso” 
expresses it:— 

Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Quail verstummt, 

Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was Ich leide! 

And when man was silenced in liis misery, 

A God gave to me to tell what I suffered. 

It is a mistake to suppose that he ever became retrograde, but 
he took his method and philosophy from biology and the social 


GOETHE. 


591 


sciences, and learned that growth and not destruction is the< 
law of progress. The key-note is found in the epigram he 
gave to Schiller. 

Das Hochste. 

Suchst Du das Hochste, das Gr&sste? Die Pflanze kanu es Dich lehren ; 
Was sie willenlos ist, sei du es wollend, das ist’s. 

The Highest. 

Seekest thou the highest, the greatest? The Plant can teach it thee; 
What that unconsciously is, he thou willingly, that is all. 

We are thus brought to the most instructive and valuable part 
of his works and life — that is, their creative and constructive 
character. He had that synthetic and stereoscopic power 
which only great Artists possess. By its aid he had expressed 
the rebellion and desolation of the new world as none others 
could, for he could analyze and yet combine, and thus present 
characters, and even states of mind, and phases of feeling as 
realities before the eye. He could realize a spiritual world, and 
embody it as a reality to others. 

Back of this artist-power lay a heart and brain that could 
not be controlled or stifled: a demoniac energy, that would play 
the role of Prometheus and people the new world with life, and 
live in it, enjoy it, make it enjoyable, and picture it as a new 
state of mind —a new spiritual world, logically and emotionally 
arising from the actual world and facts of modern life. His life 
and works are thus a true revelation of that state of mind — 
that new home of the soul into which the enlightened part of 
the human race are advancing. The poet has felt their life 
beforehand, and can give intimations of its course and destiny. 
He has been before us and learned to joyfully reconcile and 
adjust the ideas of man to his new environment. To this end, 
as he says in the Dedication to his works, which Is the story 
of his consecration, he received 

The Veil of Poesy from the hand of Truth. 

Der Dichtuug Schleier aus der Hand der Wahrheit. 

The removal of Goethe to Weimar was followed by what has 
been called “the genial period ’’ of pleasure and wild enjoyment. 


592 


G 0 E T H E. 


which his judgment could not approve, but which, in its uncyn- 
ical nature, expressed his hearty reconciliation with this world. 
The duties of public office and of practical life to which he wa 
soon called, proved his reconciliation with the labors as well as 
the pleasures of life, and that his highest aim and satisfaction 
was to be found in the performance of human duty. 

His next great work is the drama of “Iphigenia,” which 
may stand as a symbol of this reconciliation. In it the human¬ 
ity of Greek culture is brought over and married to that of 
modern life, while Christianity and all of its belongings are 
wholly dropped out of sight. Humanity, symbolized in his 
Heroine, steps forward as the true Savior and Reconciler. 

He gave the key-note of this drama, and of his own new 
life in these words of deepest meaning:— 

Alle menschlichen Gebreclien, 

Slihnet reine Mensclilichkeit, 

For all human failings 
Pure Humanity atones. 

Often afterwards the same thought appears, for instance: 

Im hochsten Sinn der Zukunft zu begrlinden, 

Humanitilt sei unser ewig Ziel. 

To found our Future in the highest sense, 

Let Humanity be our constant end and aim. 

Under this inspiration of Truth and Love, made concrete tc 
him as Science and Humanity in their widest meaning, he went 
forward to render this world not only tolerable but happy and 
glorious to mankind. To this end he worked and sang alm<>s 
to the hour of his death. 

His culture and labors were founded upon experience and tin 
practical affairs of life. His attainments and discoveries in sci 
enee are now gladly recognized by all. His practical li e gave 
him that realism that makes his sayings and proverbs rival those 
of our Poor Richard. It should be remembered that he was not 
a poet or author writing for a living, but a business man of the 
world, and that his writings are expressions by which his heart 


GOETHE. 


593 


was relieved, his mind cleared up, and his observations record¬ 
ed. He was, even in his longest works, “an occasional poet,” 
with a real event or love or occurrence prompting what he 
wrote. In this way it comes that his works do not carry their 
meaning on their face so that “he who runs may read” and 
understand. Their great value is in their suggestiveness, and 
in what they create in us. His hints strike deeper than learned 

a 

treatises, and go to the heart of the matter in hand. 

He states general laws by concrete examples, and kills as 
many birds as possible with every stone. He solves the greatest 
problems, like mathematicians, witn the smallest symbols. The 
higher we grow the better we can interpret those symbols. 

It is only those whose hearts and heads are emancipated 
from Theology who understand and appreciate him fully. To 
such there is an unfailing world of delight in his great works, 
in “ Faust,” “ Wilhelm Meister,” “Dorothea,” “ The Epigrams,” 
and “Zenien,” “The Lodge,” “The Wondrous Tale,” and the 
inimitable “God and World,” and above all, in the smaller 
lyrics. 

It is difficult to leave these works without a word. “Goethe 
and no end,” as Strauss repeats at the end of his “Old and New 
Faith ;” but an end there must be here, so to make it worthy, 
we venture to add a few extracts from his letters, and with the 
word of caution that Goethe is only to be really understood 
from his own works and letters. It is plain that the Ecker- 
manns and “ Boswells ” who seek to give his conversations, have 
unconsciously colored them with their views and feelings. 

We quote from a little book called “Goethe’s Opinions,” col¬ 
lected from his correspondence, published in London in 1853, 
and which we hope ere long to see enlarged, improved, and 
published in this country:— 

“ I honor and love the Positive , on which I myself take my 
stand, for each century confirms it more and more, and it is 
the solid basis of our life and works.” 

“ A truly liberal man employs all the means in his power to 
do all the good he can. He does not rush in with fire and 
sword to abolish imperfections, which are sometimes unavoid¬ 
able. He endeavors, by continuous progress, to remove the ills 
of the body politic; but he eschews violent measures, which 


594 


GOETHE. 


crush one evil but to create another. In this imperfect world 
of ours, he is content with the good, tmtil times and circum¬ 
stances favor him in his aspirations after the better. ,, 

And again, in reference to Lord Byron, he says: 

“His renouncing all traditions and all patriotisms was his 
ruin, and his revolutionary tendencies and his agitation of mind 
prevented a proper development of his talents. His eternal 
opposition and censure is, moreover, highly derogatory to his 
excellent works, such as they are. For not only does the 
reader share the poet’s discomforts, but. all this opposition 
tends to negation, and negation is nothing. What can be the 
advantage of saying that bad things are bad ? And when I say 
that good things are bad, I do a great deal of harm. Whoever 
would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure; he 
ought not to pay any attention to what is wrong; and he ought 
always to do that which is good. We ought not to destroy, but 
we ought to construct what may be pleasing [i. e., useful] to 
humanity.” 

“A mind filled with abstract ideas, and infested with conceit, 
is ripe for mischief.” 

“Which is the best government? That which teaches self- 
government.” 

“ The object of life is life itself—it we do not our duty to our 
own minds, we shall soon cease to do it to the world.” 

“ Love, charity and science can alone make us happy and 
tranquil in this world of ours.” 

We add the following from his works: 

“ The rational human world is to be considered as a great 
Immortal Individual, who unceasingly works the Necessary, 
and thereby raises itself to be the Master over the Accidental.’-* 

Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt. 

Hat auch Religion; 

Wer jene beiden nicht besitzt, 

Der habe Religion. 

Who Science has and Art, 

Has also Religion; 

Who of them neither has 
Let him have Religion. 


GOETHE. 


595 


Ihr Glaubigen! rtihmt nur nicht euren Glauben, 

Als einzigen; wir glauben aucb wie ihr; 

Der Forscher liisst sicb keineswegs berauben 
Des Erbtheils, aller "Welt gegonnt— und mir! 

Ye believers, boast not your Faiths 

As the only ones; we believe as well as ye. 

The Truth-Seeker is in no way robbed 

Of the inheritance granted to all the world—and to me! 


Ob erfiillt sei was Moses und was Propheten gesprochen. 

An dem heiligen Christ, Freunde, das weiss ich nicht recht. 

Aber das weiss ich; erfiillt sind Wiinche, Sehnsucht und Traiime, 
Wenn das liebliche Kind sliss mir am Busen entschlaft. 

Whether has been fulfilled, what Moses and what Prophets said 
About the holy Christ, that, friends, I knew not indeed. 

But this I know; wishes, longing and dreams are fulfilled, 

When the lovely child falls asleep so sweetly on my breast. 

Wem zu glauben ist, redlicher Freund, das kann ich Dir sagen:i 
Glaube dem Leben! Es lehrt besser als Redner und Buch. 

In whom to believe, that, honest friend, I can tell thee well: 
Believe in Life itself! It teaches better than Preacher or Book. 

Schadliche Wahrheit, ich ziehe sie vor dem nutzlichen Irrthum.. 
Wahrheit heilet den Schmerz, den sie vielleicht uns erregt. 

Hurtful truth I choose, rather than convenient error, 

For Truth heals the wounds which she may perhaps inflick 

Irrthum verlasst uns nie; doch ziehet ein hoher Bedurfniss 
Immer den strebenden Geist leise zur Wahrheit hinan. 

Error leaves us never; yet a higher need ever draws 
The striving spirit gently upward towards the truth. 



596 


LAPLACE. 


LAPLACE. 

This celebrated French mathematician and astronomer,— 
the propounder of the brilliant “Nebular Hypothesis,” was born 
near Honfleur, in the year 1749. As early as his 19th year he 
taught mathematics in a military school. He obtained letters 
of introduction to the celebrated D’Alembert, and went to Pars 
with the view of seeking an interview with him; but finding no 
notice taken of his letters, he wrote a short paper on some 
points of mechanical philosophy, which immediately procured for 
him the attention to his claims that he desired. D’Alembert 
sent for him, and about 1769 had him appointed Professor of 
Mathematics at the Paris Military School. In 1773 he was 
chosen a probationary member of the Academy of Sciences, 
and about that time produced a capital “Memoir on Differen¬ 
tial Equations and the Secular Inequalities of the Planets.” 
Heroically grappling with the most arduous questions of 
Mathematical Astronomy, he soon began to demonstrate in 
detail the principles of Newton. In 1785 he became a titular 
member of the Academy of Sciences, which he enriched with 
memoirs on pure mathematics, general astronomy, and the 
theory of the planets. Napoleon, when First Consul, appointed 
him Minister of the Interior, thinking, perhaps, that the dis¬ 
turbing forces of the social and political spheres might be 
regulated by the man who had ascertained the laws of the 
planetary perturbations. But alas! this was taking the great 
mathematician right out of his natural sphere; and, of course, 
he proved a great failure as a politician. In a short time he 
was removed from that office to the Presidentship of the Senat 
Conservateur. 01 him as a Minister, Napoleon afterwards said, 
— “A mathematician of the highest rank, he lost not a moment 
in showing himself below mediocrity as a Minister. He looked 
at no question in its true point of view. He was always search¬ 
ing after subtleties; all his ideas were problems; and he aimed 
to conduct the government on the principles of the infinitesimal 


LAPLAC£. 


597 

calculus.” However, he was created a count by the Great 
Emperor, and afterwards a marquis by Louis XVIII. His 
principal works were “Celestial Mechanics,” (1799 —1827) “Ana¬ 
lytical Theory of Probabilities,” (1812) and a “ Philosophic Essay 
on Probabilities,” (1814). A complete edition of his writings 
was published by the French Government in 1843. The capital 
monument of his genius is his treatise on “Celestial Mechanics,” 
which will doubtless preserve his memory to the latest posterity. 
It is impossible here to convey a proper idea of the extent and 
value of this great work. To enumerate the bare contents 
thereof would require several pages. The intention of the 
work was to deduce, from the discoveries of the great astrono¬ 
mers who had preceded the author, a complete and harmonious 
system, and to perfect the marvelous work commenced by 
Newton, in the discovery of the law of gravitation. 

In 1796 he published important discoveries in his “Exposi¬ 
tion of the System of the Universe,” which is a kind of trans¬ 
lation into popular language, without analytical formulas, of 
his great work. It was this “Exposition” that procured for 
him the reputation of a pure and elegant writer, and in due 
time opened to him the doors of the French Academy in 1816. 
He was for many years a member, and eventually President of 
the Bureau of Longitudes. He was also chosen an Associate of 
many foreign Academies. He received the title of Count in 1806. 
He died in 1827, at the age of seventy-eight, and two years after 
the appearance of the last volume of his “Celestial Mechanics.” 

Laplace shares with Lagrange the honor of proving the 
stability of the planetary system. But he attained a far higher 
celebrity than the latter, on account of his ranging over a 
much wider field of discovery. Within this field we need only 
mention his discovery and demonstration of the theory of 
Jupiter’s satellites, and the causes of the grand inequality of 
Jupiter and Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean 
motion. Few will refuse to admit that he was the greatest 
astronomer since Newton. 

His great work has been translated, in part, by Dr. Bowdiich. 
The popular work of Mrs Somerville — “ The Mechanism of the 
Heavens” — is a selection from it; and no inconsiderable share 
of what was most attractive in the earlier portions of the pop- 



503 


LAPLACE. 


ular “Vestiges of Creation” was based upon the same source. 
Let it never be forgotten that one of Laplace’s last expres¬ 
sions was, “What we know is but little; that which we know 
not is immense.” Compare this with similar expressions of 
other great men —the greatest which the Race ever produced. 
And then compare with these the superficial and flippant 
assumptions of theologians, ontologists, transcendentalists, 
seers, impressionables, scientasters, and other incapables, and 
arrive at your own conclusions. 

This may be the proper place to state that the famous 
“Nebular Hypothesis,” of which Laplace was the propounder 
and developer, has of late years been ably assailed, on juirely 
scientific grounds, by many able men, who propose as its sub¬ 
stitute the apparently much more rational and certainly more 
optimistic “Aggregation Theory” of the constitution and 
revolution of at least the members of our Solar System, what¬ 
ever may be said about the distant stars. This Theory supposes 
the planets to have been built up of matter constantly falling 
on them, in the form of meteors, aerolites, “space-dust,” and 
all the well nigh imperceptible matter which attaches itself to 
them in their passage through space. And thus it is that the 
planets are constantly growing. The first motions of the young 
planet, especially, around its own axis, may have been purely 
owing to the tangential force imparted to a comparatively small 
mass, by a smaller but not inconsiderable mass attracted to it; 
all this, of course, long previous to its ulimate regular rotation 
and revolution — as member of a self-perfecting system. Accord¬ 
ing to this theory the great vexed question of Astronomy — pure 
retrograde motion —as well as several other violent anomalies 
which the “Nebular Hypothesis ” never could account for, seem 
to be satisfactorily explained. And the tendency of this 
theory is to doubt the “internal fire and dry crust doctrine” 
of the Earth, as well as the “ dead decay ” of the Moon, and 
several other things that we have of late years been taught as 
well nigh infallible. Science is ever self-corrective. Its “the¬ 
ories” may come and go; but its “method” is ever right. We 
watch with great interest the struggle between the “Nebular” 
and the “ Aggregation ” Theories, not caring which wins, only 
that the Truth may prevail. 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


599 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 

Stephen Girard was a marked and rather eccentric charac¬ 
ter. He possessed a strong mind, a fixed resolution, and an 
excellent judgment. He undoubtedly lacked some of the genial, 
social traits by which the world are so greatly attracted, but in 
his sternness and unattractiveness he possessed practical and 
useful qualities. In his way, by his untiring perseverance and 
industry he produced great results in amassing an immense 
fortune. In this regard, few men have equaled him. 

Stephen Girard was bom in Bordeaux, France, in 1750. Cap¬ 
tain Pierre Girard, a successful mariner, was his father. He 
was the oldest of a family of five children, and had much 
fewer opportunities for acquiring an education than his younger 
brothers, and in after life he complained of the slight he had 
received. He was blind in one eye, and suffered much in his 
boyhood days from the frequent mention of the deficiency 
made by his companions. This doubtless tended to make his 
disposition sour and taciturn. He was a wilful, arbitrary and 
irascible boy. Before he was fourteen he commenced to follow 
the sea as cabin boy. For nine years he sailed between Bor¬ 
deaux and the French West Indies, and became lieutenant of 
the vessel. During this time he studied considerably and made 
some amends for his earlier neglect. He used often to say in 
after life that he began the world with a sixpence. In 1773 he 
was licensed to command a vessel. His father a sis ted him in 
starting on his own account as part-owner of the vessel he 
commanded, and in the purchase of merchandise, with which 
he loaded the same, and sailed for the West Indies. He was 
successful in his enterprise; he sold his cargo, bought another, 
and sailed for New York, where he arrived in July, 1774. 

He continued his successful operations as “mariner and mer¬ 
chant,” as he always fondly styled himself, for two years, sail¬ 
ing to and trading at different ports; when in May, 1776, his 
vessel, loaded with a valuable cargo, bound from New Orleans 


600 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


to a Canadian port, he narrowly escaped capture by a British 
cruiser near the mouth of Delaware Bay, and his only escape 
was to sail up Delaware Biver to Philadelphia. This circum¬ 
stance gave him to the Quaker City; it was afterwards his resi¬ 
dence and the scene of his vast financial operations. It was 
perhaps the most congenial home the eccentric, cheerless man 
could have found. He esteemed the Quakers, because of their 
steady, frugal habits, plain, unostentatious manners, and be¬ 
cause they had no priests —a class of men towards whom he 
cherished a hearty and undisguised aversion. He had no respect 
for any other religious sect. 

Girard commenced business in a small store in Water Street,, 
near the spot which for sixty years he made his home. He 
commenced as a grocer and a wine-bottler. He attended closely 
to business, and what he lacked in geniality and affability he 
made up in economy, application and integrity. He acquired 
the use of the English language slowly, and to his death spoke 
with a decided French accent. He was grave beyond his years, 
so that at the age of twenty-six he was called “old Girard.” 
He was well aware of his inability to please, and demurely 
bore the derision of his neighbors, quietly plodding on his way. 

His judgment in matters of business was deemed almost 
infallible, and he prospered greatly in all his enterprises, with 
the exception, perhaps, of his matrimonial enterprise. When 
twenty-seven, he casually formed the acquaintance of a beauti¬ 
ful, dark-eyed, black-haired servant girl of seventeen, of whom 
he became enamoured. He visited her frequently, and when he 
offered her his hand she accepted; but they did not live happily 
together. They differed in age, nationality, tastes, disposition, 
and mental characteristics. He was taciturn and exacting, and 
did not make her a happy husband. They led an inharmo¬ 
nious life together for eight years, when she became Insane, V 
and it was found necessary for her to be placed in the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Hospital, where she remained till the year 1816, when 
death came to her relief. He made all needed arrangements 
for her comfort during the years she passed in the hospital, 
but her insanity increased till her death. 

As much as his mind was absorbed in the accumulation 
of wealth, there was room in his heart for kindness and sym- 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


601 


pathy for the unfortunate of his kind. When the yellow fever 
visited Philadelphia with such virulence in 1793, when one-half 
the inhabitants fled, and when, in a population of twenty-five 
thous nd, there were over four thousand deaths in three 
months. Consternation and terror pervaded the city. There 
were often not well ones enough to care for the sick. Whole 
families not unfrequently died without attention. Nurses could 
not be had at any price. The dead were gathered in carts ami 
buried in a common grave, without ceremony. It is in such 
emergencies as this that grand self-sacrificing souls show them¬ 
selves. Girard was one of these. He went to the wretched 
hospital and devoted his entire services almost day and night 
as director, manager and nurse. For sixty days he continued 
to watch over the loathsome objects of disease and suffering 
that came to the hospital. Help was extremely scarce, and he 
often met the sick and dying at the gate and carried them in,, 
waited on them carefully, watched over them faithfully, and 
when death relieved them, he hastily wrapped them in a sheet 
and carried the bodies out to the dead cart. Many a poor 
creature did he bend over and receive their dying words as the 
breath lef their bodies. If he ever left the hospital it was 
only to assist in gathering up the poor wretches that were 
lying unattended in the infested districts. This he not unfre¬ 
quently did when his hospital duties would permit. He was the 
most heroic, self-sacrificing and faithful nurse in the whole city. 

Twice afterwards when Philadelphia was visited by the same 
pestilence in 1797 and 1798 Girard took the lead as nurse and 
attendant. Besides giving his time and risking his own life, he 
gave freely of his money to relieve and befriend the sufferers. 
If he was a cold business man of the world, if he had not as 
oi'y a tongue and as prepossessing manners as some men, the 
noble work he so freely devoted himself to, must commend him 
to all, as a sympathetic, kind-hearted man, wil ing to give his life 
for others. He had very little confidence in medicine and doc¬ 
tors, but an unfailing confidence in nature and good nursing. 
He was regarded as very successful, and many a poor fellow did 
he save by his watchful nursing, who had been given up to die. 

As soon as he was no longer require ! as nurse he hastened 
back to his business, which under his sagacious management 


602 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


constantly enlarged. He had ships sailing to all parts of the 
world, carrying out the surplus which this country afforded and 
bringing in return the products and treasures of other lands. 
He also sent cargoes to a given port, then another cargo from 
that to another, and to another, and finally, perhaps, loading 
with tea at a Chinese port, for home. 

He often named his ships after his favorites. Thus his vessels 
were severally named "Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, Montes¬ 
quieu, etc. As may be inferred from this circumstance, he 
was a decided Infidel. He utterly discarded all the dogmas 
of Christianity, which he regarded as the superstitions and 
errors of darker ages. He was an inveterate foe to priestcraft, 
and entertained no respect for that class of mankind, which he 
deemed crafty, designing, indolent, useless, non-productive and 
an absolute curse to the world. He held the highest respect 
for honesty, integrity, industry, frugality and simplicity in dress 
and outward show. 

He was thought by his fellow merchants to be a very lucky 
man, but the remarkable success which he achieved was more 
the result of sound judgment, watchfulness and untiring indus¬ 
try than luck. Few men were more capable than Girard in 
calculating natural probabilities and results. He was seldom 
mistaken in his judgment or in his men, of whom he had large 
numbers employed. He paid moderate salaries, but they were 
sure and the labor unfailing. He exacted implicit observance 
of orders and frequently discharged his captains and other 
employees for disregarding his orders, though money was made 
for him by disobedience to orders. 

In the war of 1812 Girard made a great amount of money. 
When the war was imminent he had near a million of dollars 
in the bank of Baring Brothers in London. It was us less then 
for purposes of commerce and besides, in the unsettled condi¬ 
tion of affairs, was in peril. He invested it in United States 
stock and in the stock of the United States Bank, both depre¬ 
ciated in England; the < harter of the bank h ;d recently expired, 
and its affairs being in liquidation he easily bought out the 
entire concern, buildings and all, and he then conducted, with 
the same cashier, clerks, etc., the Banking business in the 
name of Girard’s Bank. 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


603 


His financial mangement was most shrewd. In the language 
of Parton, “ he was the very sheet anchor of the government 
oredit during the whole of that disastrous war. If advances 
were required at a critical moment, it was Girard who was 
prompted to make them. When all other banks and houses 
were contracting, it was Girard who stayed the panic by a 
timely and liberal expansion. When all other paper was dej re- 
ciated, Girard’s notes were as good as gold. In 1814, when the 
credit of the government was at its lowest ebb, when a loan of 
five millions, at seven per cent, interest and twenty dollars 
bonus, was up for weeks and only twenty thousand dollars pro¬ 
cured, it was * old Girard ’ who boldly subscribed the whole 
amount, which at once gave market value, and infused life into 
the paralyzed credit of the nation.” Again in 1816 when the 
subscriptions lagged fearfully for the United States Bank, 
Girard on the last day quietly subscribed for all the stock that 
had not been taken $3,100,00. In 1829, when the enormous 
expenditures of Pennsylvania, upon her canal, exhausted her 
treasury and involved her greatly in debt, it was Girard who 
made such advances to the governor that i">revented the suspen¬ 
sion of the public "works, when indeed, it was a matter of 
uncertainty whether the Legislature would reimburse him. 

As Girard became advanced in life and well knew his death 
could not be far removed, what should be the disposition of 
his vast wealth, occupied a large share of his attention. He 
often said, “No man shall be a gentleman on my money,” He 
decided to found an institution for orphans, in which they 
might be freely educated. He gave to the Pennsylvania Hos¬ 
pital— where his insane wife long resided — $30,000; to the Deaf 
and Dumb Asylum, $20,000; to the Orphan Asylum, $10,000; to 
the Lancaster Public School, $10,000; to the Society of Dis¬ 
tressed Sea Captains, $10,000; to the Freemasons, $20,000; 1o 
his surviving brother and his eleven nieces sums ranging from 
$5,000 to $60,000 each. To the city of Philadelphia, $500,000; to 
the State of Philadelphia, for her canals, $300,000. After several 
other minor bequests, he willed the remainder of his fortune — 
some $6,000,000 —for the construction and endowment of a Col¬ 
lege for Orphans. 

His will was carefully drawn up by Mr. Duane, an eminent 


604 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


lawyer in. whom Girard liad immense confidence. The most 
remarkable passage in it pertains to the Orphan’s College, and 
is here given: 

“I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister 
of any sect whatever shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty 
whatever in the said College; nor shall any such person ever be ad¬ 
mitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within. the premises appro¬ 
priated to the purpose of the said College. 

“In making this restriction, I do not mean to cast any reflection 
upon any sect or person whatsoever, but as there are such a multi¬ 
tude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, I desire 
to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who are to derive advan¬ 
tages from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing 
doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce; my desire 
is, that all the instructors and teachers in the College shall take pains 
to instill into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of mor¬ 
ality, so that, on their entrance into active life, they may, from incli¬ 
nation and habit, evince benevolence toward their fellow-creatures, 
and a love of truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting, at the same 
time, such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable them 
to prefer.” 

He also directed that the College should be built plainly and 
substantially; and it is much to be regretted that the injunc¬ 
tions he gave have in many respects been so greatly disre¬ 
garded. He died two years after making his will, and as the 
supervision of his munificent legacy passed under the control 
of the city authorities — mere politicians and tricksters, amen¬ 
able only to their partisans — the directions of Girard, when he 
was laid in his grave, were little thought of, and in place of 
a plain, unpretentious building, the College was erected like a 
magnificent Grecian temple, surrounded by numerous massive 
columns towards which Girard felt a special abhorrence. The 
walls exuded dampness continually. The rooms of the upper 
story, lighted only from above, were so hot as to be useless 
in summer, and the lower rooms were so cold in winter as to 
jeopardize the health of the inmates. Thus was the great gift 
of Girard culpably misapplied. Far better would it have been 


STEPHEN GIRARD. 


605 


Tiad he seen fit to erect the College under his own plans while 
he yet lived. It would have saved the waste of hundreds of 
thousands of dollars and given the orphans a far more com¬ 
fortable edifice in which to pursue their studies. 

In other essential particulars the will of Girard has been 
shamefully disregarded. It was his express injunction that 
priests and sectarians should have nothing to do with the 
Orphan’s College, but by the manipulations of Christians and 
politicians this provision has in effect been set aside, and the 
express wishes of the generous Girard wholly ignored. 

The first class admitted into the College was in 1848, and 
amounted to one hundred. Since then the number has increased 
to nearly seven hundred. The estate is constantly increasing 
in value, and it is expected as many as fifteen hundred scholars 
will be annually taught there. Thus a permanent benefit is 
accruing from the labors of this one man. 

At his death his estate was estimated to be worth between 
nine and ten million of dollars. The largest fortune that had 
then been amassed by any individual in the country. Since 
that time, with improved facilit.es, larger fortunes have in a 
few instances been made, but perhaps not so honestly. 

In December, 1831, Mr. Girard was severely attacked with 
influenza the result, in part, of an accident which happened to 
him in the street. Notwithstanding his last illness was severe, 
true to his principles or his prejudices, he refused to be cupped 
or to take drugs into his system. He preferred to pass away 
na urally, and not to be drugged out of the world. 

Thus passed away this strong-minded, angular and remarka¬ 
ble man. If he had faults and i.nperfec.ions like other men, 
he was only human, but he i>ossessed also sterling qualities and 
^commendable virtues. 




606 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 

If the reader turns to an ordinary Biographical Dictionary* 
even if it be one which pretends to give an exhaustive account 
of the lives and works of the dead and the living of whom it 
treats, he will find something to this effect passed as a worthy 
memoir of the distinguished name which heads this article:— 

This English antiquary and Greek scholar, was born in Here¬ 
fordshire in 1750. The boroughs of Leominster and Ludlow 
several times elected him to Parliament. He was somewhat 
noted as a numismatic and art-connoisseur, and made a large 
collection of Greek coins, bronzes, and various works of art 
valued at £50,000, (about a quarter of a million of dollars,) which 
he bequeathed to the British Museum. He contributed to the 
‘'Edinburgh Review,” and wrote a mediocre poem on “The 
Progress of Civil Society” (1796). Among other works he wrote 
“An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste,” (1805). 

It is precisely these other works that will be briefly noticed 
here. And to commence, he published in 1786 a limited edition 
of a treatise entitled “An Account of the Remains of the Wor¬ 
ship of Priapus [the God of Procreation], lately existing at 
Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, etc.; to which is added a 
Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with 
the Mystic Theology of the Ancients.” This delicate subject 
was discussed by Mr. Knight with moderation and remarkable 
caution. It is true the subject was extraordinary and prohib¬ 
ited from common conversation as indelicate in the extreme, 
but Mr. Knight took particular care that prudish pruriency 
should not have occasion to resort to what he wrote for either 
hypocritical censure or morbid pleasure. “He added engrav¬ 
ings, however, from coins, medals, and other remains of ancient 
art, which he had collected; all of which were genuine and 
authenticated, but were made a handle by which to misrepre¬ 
sent and vilify him. Having been elected to Parliament, a mem¬ 
ber who was opposed to him in politics took the occasion in 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


607 


debate to assert that he had written an improper book. Mr. 
Knight, long before, in consequence of the clamor and of the 
calumny to which he was subjected, had suppressed a portion 
of the edition, and destroyed whatever copies came in his way. 
But indecency did not constitute the offense of the book. Facts 
were disclosed in regard to the arcana of religion, which the ini¬ 
tiated had before sedulously kept veiled from popular knowledge. 
Mr. Knight had only endeavored to present to scholars a com¬ 
prehensive view of the origin and nature of a worship once 
general in the Eastern World; but it was easy to perceive that 
many of the elements of that worship had been adopted and 
perpetuated in the modern faith [Christianity] by which it had 
been superseded. A philosophical reasoner cannot perceive 
why it should be otherwise. Opinions and institutions are not 
revolutionized in a day, but are slowly modified by reflection 
and experience. Beligion, like the present living race of men, 
descended literally from the worships of former time with like 
elements and operation. Names have often been changed 
where the ideas and customs remained. But men often fail to 
think deeply, and are impatient of any newly-presented fact 
which renders them conscious of having cherished an error. 
Instead of examining the matter, Ihey often seek to divert 
attention from it, by vilifying the persons making the unwel¬ 
come disclosures. But the works of Mr. Knight, though covertly 
and ungenerously assailed, have remained, and are still eagerly 
sought and read by scholarly and intelligent men.” 

In 1818, he privately printed his “Symbolical Language 
of Ancient Art and Mythology. An Inquiry.” Afterward, with 
his consent, it was reprinted in the “Classical Journal.” A 
third time, in 1836, it was published by a London House, 
having been edited for the purpose by E. H. Barker, Esq., a 
gentleman of high literary capacity. This is a most erudite 
work, and bears heavily upon the origin of the Cross, the Vir¬ 
gin-mother, Jesus, the Christ, and the whole body of the Chris¬ 
tian Religion. In connection with Higgins’ “ Anacalypsis ” 
and Inman’s “Ancient Faiths,” and other such works, this, 
book ought to be read and studied by every Liberal who wishes 
to dig deep to the bed-rock and thoroughly examine the pri¬ 
meval fossil-monsters of stratified Christianity. 


€08 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


“ Richard Payne Kniglit was one of the most thorough 
scholars of the earlier period of the present century. His works 
display profound judgment, discrimination, taste, acuteness, and 
erudiiion, united with extraordinary candor and impartiality; 
and they constitute an invaluable collection of ancient and 
curious learning, from which the students of such literature 
can draw abundant supplies.” No wonder that, in common 
with a noble host of investigators, all along the ages, “Mr. 
Knight suffered, as all men must, for cultivating knowledge 
and promulgating sentiments at variance with the popular 
idea. Indeed, while he lived, freedom of thought and speech 
was restrained in the British Dominions, to an extent which 

now appears almost incredible.In religious matters, 

while open impurity of life incurred little disapproval, there 
existed an extraordinary sensitiveness in regard to every possi¬ 
ble encroachment upon the domain fenced off and consecrated 
to technical orthodoxy. There was a taboo as strict, if not as 
mysterious, as was ever imposed and enforced by the sacerdotal 
caste of the Kanaka Islands. To be sure, it had become impos¬ 
sible to offer up a dissentient or an innovator as a sacrifice, or to 
imprison and burn him as a heretic. But it was possible to 
inflict social proscription, and to stigmatize unpopular senti¬ 
ments. The late Dr. Priestley [as we have seen] was one of 
these offenders, and found It expedient, after great persecution 
and annoyance, to emigrate to the United States of America, 
where his property was not liable to be destroyed by mobs, and 
he could end his days in peace. An exemplary life, embel¬ 
lished with every public and private virtue, seemed to consti¬ 
tute an aggravation rather than to extenuate the offense. . . 

It is easy to perceive that Mr. Knight, although an exemplary 
citizen of unexceptionable character, would not escape.” 

The subjects treated of in his books, and especially in his 
first, are continuing to attract the almost universal attention of 
the learned and curious in Europe. “Ever since the revival of 
learning, strange objecis have from time to time been discov¬ 
ered— objects which, although they may amaze or amuse the 
weak-minded, have induced earnest students to inquire into 
their origin and true meaning. Various matters and discoveries 
assisted in clearing up the mystery; the emblems and symbols 



RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


609 


gradually explained tlieir full meaning, and the outlines of an 
extraordinary creed unfolded itself. It was . . . the worship 
or adoration of the god Priapus — the ancient symbol of gen¬ 
eration and fertility. The Bound Towers in Ireland; similar 
Buildings in India; the May-pole in England, and even the 
spires of our churches [and the Christian ‘cross’ itself ] are now 
shown to he nothing more nor less than existing symbols of this 
pagan and strange worship. Almost all the great relics of antiq¬ 
uity bear traces of this . . . adoration — the rock caves 

of Elephanta, near Bombay, the earth and stone mounds of 
Europe, Asia, and America — the Druidical piles and the remains 
of the so-called Fire-worshipers in every part of the world. 
Even existing popular customs and beliefs are full of remnants 
of this . . . devotion.” 

Mr. Knight has had his worthy successor of late years in 
the person of one of the most distinguished of English anti¬ 
quaries— the author of numerous works which are held in high 
-esteem, among which are, “An Essay on the Worship of the 
Generative Powers during the Middle Ages of Western Europe,” 
which brings our knowledge of the worship of Priapus down to 
the present time, so as to include the most recent discoveries 
throwing any light upon the matter. The author was assisted, 
it is understood, by two prominent Fellows of the Boyal Society, 
one of whom has recently presented a wonderful collection of 
Phallic objects to the British Museum authorities. 

In the ever-growing Phallic literature of to-day we have 
already tolerably full and satisfactory interpretations of all the 
-chief emblems and symbols and special divinities of the tem¬ 
ples, groves, and “mysteries” of the Ancient Worship of the 
Generative Powers all over the world. We find that to this 
Worship distinctly and rightfully belong not only all the poor 
symbo*l-remnants of which Mosaic Judaism and Primitive and 
Modern Chris:ianity are made up, but also many of the gods, 
goddesses, demi-gods, heroes, and “saviors” whom we have 
been taught as presiding almost exclusively over Heaven, or 
Olympus, or Hell, as well as Bel, Tammuz, Eros, Astarte, Cas¬ 
tor and Pollux, Pan, the Bearded Yenus, the Many-breasted 
Diana, the Amazons, Hermaphrodites, Androgynes, Satyrs, 
Eauns, Chimeras, tfye Minotaurs, Centaurs, Griffin^, Sphinxes, 


610 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


Bull-Lions, Goat-Elephants, and oth6r monstrosities;' as well 
as the Father of Gods and Men; the Immaculate Conception 
of the God-conceiving Virgin; the Incarnation of the Savior of 
the World (a Priapie figure); the sacred rites of male circum¬ 
cision and priestly defloration, and of female purification and 
templar prostitution; of religio-sexual dances, ecstacies, deliri¬ 
ums, frenzies, and orgies in sanctum and grove (as, later, in 
church and “camp-meeting”); of baptismal and initiatory 
sprinklings and immersions, catechismal confirmations, bread 
and wine eucharists, flagellations and other penances, holy 
anointings, consecrations and ordinations into the priesthood, 
auricular confessions, incense-burning, oracular deliverances, 
psalm and hymn singing, and the heavenly furors of foot-stamp¬ 
ing, fist-striking, and hideous wails and howls in preaching and 
praying. To this most ancient Worship also belonged most of 
the grips, winks, signs, tokens, emblems, symbols, instruments, 
regalia, and ceremonies of every secret conclave and society 
that has ever since appeared. And to it in particular belonged 
the double-sexed emblems of the aidoia, the lingam between 
two curved serpents, the coiled serpent, the hooded snake, the 
black beetle, the dolphin, the tunny, the eel, the tortoke, the 
egg, the myrtle and other evergreens; the male symbols of the 
lingam proper, the phallus, the phallic manikin, (1 Kings, xv. 
13,) the bull, calf, ram, lamb, goat, deer, horse, lion, leopard 
and polyp, the fig, vine, pomegranate-flower, olive, oak and 
oak-leaf, fir, and ivy, the pine-cone, the Tau and Masculine 
Cross, the cross-road, the horned-crescent, the pyramid, pyra¬ 
midal stone, fcolumn, pinnacle, church-s;>ire and May-pole, heat, 
fire; and the Kadeshim, or men devoted to temple service, and 
especially to minister to the pleasures of the female worship¬ 
ers; and lastly, the female signs, symbols and tokens of the 
yoni, omphe , nymphe , delphus , the cow, heifer, mare, doe, rab¬ 
bit, cat, mouse, owl, sparrow, and tortoise, the lubric fish and 
oyster, crab, lizard, and frog, the apple, poppy-head, barley-corn, 
and lotus, the circle, ellipse, delta, disk, and vase, the cunnus 
or ground-fissure, labyrinth, woman’s comb, conch of Venus, 
bells and bell-ringing, the open boat or ark, water, and slippery 
humidity; and the kadeshuth, (or almas and devadasi) the templar 
bayaderes and nautch girls of the East, religious dancers, pro- 


RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT. 


611 


phetesses, pythonesses, and holy maiden and matron prostitu es 
of the sanctum, the grove, and the “high places.” (See Gene¬ 
sis xxxviii. 15, and Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, 
and Micah, passim.) 

Let none say that the above list is out of place here. It is 
earnestly hoped that it will incite more than one reader to visit, 
inspect, and study this primevalest of all the Pantheons down 
deep to the very granite of its foundation, as well as 1o the 
skyey heights of its aspiration. For within its ample roomage 
is certainly included all of the little corner -cultus of Judaism 
and Christianity in all their various aspects, sects, and schisms; 
and, of course, infinitely more. Indeed, to change the meta¬ 
phor, both Judaism and Christianity were very indiscriminate 
in their sacrilegious burglary of these old signs, symbols, doc¬ 
trines, and ceremonies. They seem to have been compelled, by 
their innate and consummate stupidity, to have snatched their 
poor choice of the plunder like an awkward thief of a < ark 
night; whereas, if they had been blessed with the faculty of 
enlightened discrimination, they would undoubtedly have left 
unstolen most of what they did steal, and on the other hand 
stolen a goodly part of what they did not even touch. But alas 
for the world! parent and son — burglars both — they seem to 
have been struck judgment-blind; and one result at least is, 
that we are all cursed and loaded down to-day with a criminal's 
pack of intellectual and religious lead and linsel, (whose dull¬ 
ness and glitter make up that ridiculous congloiterate called 
Theology), and in the blaze of this nineteenth centu y, are still 
obliged to consign ourselves to work like grimy slaves in the 
mines of intellectual and religious gold which had b en so 
long guarded from our diligent search and covered up from our 
longing sight by the savage hordes of black-cowled, black- 
frocked, and lynx-eyed Bigotry and Superstition. 

To Kichard Payne Knight the Liberal world wi.l ever feel 
deeply grateful for his prospecting pioneeiship in this New Land 
of ancient lore. The grand old delver died with his hand on 
his shovel, in 1824, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. 


612 


COUNT RUMFORD. 


COUNT RUMFORD. 


Woburn, Massachusetts, has the honor of being the native 
place of this distinguished Philosopher, Scientist and Economist. 
Benjamin Thompson was born March 26, 1752. After he left 
school, at the age of fourteen, he served a while as a cle k in 
a store in Salem. At sixteen he attended a course of lectures 
on Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. This stirred up 
his enthusiasm for physical and scientific research, which never 
afterwards left him. Like some other great men who distin¬ 
guished themselves in statesmanship, literature, and science, he 
worked at the shoe bench in his youth, and was the actual 
inventor of shoe-pegs, now in use all over the world. For two 
years he taught school at Rumford (now Concord, N. H). In 
1772 he married a rich widow, named Mrs. Rolfe, of Rumford, 
and removed with her to his native place, Woburn. 

When the war of the Revolution broke out he joined the 
American army and took part in the battle of Lexington. 
Being ambitious, he sought a commission from Congress, but 
failed from the fact that he was a friend of Governor Went¬ 
worth of New Hampshire and others who were friendly to 
England, and he was thought, therefore, to favor the British 
cause. This brought him under such suspicion and animad¬ 
version that he found it necessary to seek protection within the 
British lines, and in 1776 sailed for England. His friends claim 
he was at all times loyal to the American cause. 

In London he formed the acquaintance of scientific and mil¬ 
itary men, and was soon raised to distinction as a member of 
the Royal Society and Under-Secretary of State, and also as 
Colonel of the British army. His fondness for travel took him 
to Strasburg. Here he made the acquaintance of Deux Pouts, 
afterward king of Bavaria, who introduced Thompson to men of 
eminence and literary distinction. Munich became his residence 
and the seat of his subsequent fame. His philosophical and 
scientific researches and discoveries became celebrated through- 


COUNT KUMFORD. 


613 


out Europe. His public and domestic improvements were 
acknowledged and adopted. His scientific investigations were 
aborious, original, and tended to purposes of practical utility. 
The two mysterious agencies, heat and light, were special 
objects of his attention. He experimented on the non-con¬ 
ducting power of the different substances pro iucing heat, that he 
might bring them to practical use in clothing. He investigated 
the phenomena of radiation, so that in the modes of producing, 
letaining, and economizing heat, the greatest results might be 
brought into use with the smallest expense of combustion. His 
philanthropic institutions for the support and nourishment of 
the poor, were among the most fortunate and successful efforts of 
his genius. He succeeded in relieving society of one of its most 
unprofitable burdens, and substituting industry and comforl in 
t e place of mendicancy, profligacy and want. In the applica- 
ti :>n oi his services in this direction, an expensive monument 
was erected at Munich, commemorating his efforts in behalf of 
ihe poor, and bearing inscriptions to that effect. He was 
knighted by the kings of Great Britain and Poland, ana v;as 
raised to the dignity of Count of the German Empire. His 
title was Count Rumford, taking the name from the place 
where he first taught school in New Hampshire. 

He suppressed mendicity at Munich by the establishment of 
workhouses in which beggars were compelled to earn their 
subsistence. He proved that the gases are non-conductors, 
and the fluids very imperfect conductors of heat. He ex- 
p ained that heat is propagated in liquids only by convection, 
or by the continuous transposition of the particles of the liquid, 
and that a flame in open air gives but little heat, except to 
bo ies >laced above it. He made improvements in the con- 
s ruction of chimneys, and in the apparatus for heating and 
lighting houses. 

In 1795 he re-visited London, where he published some 
essays treating upon the above subjects. He returned to Munich 
in 1795, and was appointed ambassador to London in 1798, but the 
English Court would not receive him in that capacity, claiming 
he was a British subject. He formed the plan of the Royal 
Institution of London, which was founded in 1800. His power 
and influence at the Court of Munich having ceased in conse- 


Cli 


COUNT R UM FORD. 


quence of the death of the Elector, in 1799 he removed to 
Erance. His first wife, whom he left in the United States, was 
now dead, and he married the widow of Lavoisier, the great 
chemist, in 1805; but they soon separated, from mutual repul¬ 
sion. Count Eumford died at Auteuil in August, 1814, aged 
sixty-two. 

His Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, were 
published in three volumes, (1798-1806). 

It was he who overthrew the speculative notion of the exist¬ 
ence of a caloric fluid, which had prevailed from the time of 
Aristotle, and he proved that the mysterious so-called “vital 
force ” does not exist. He boldly proclaimed the Materialistic 
doctrine that the motive power observed in all living beings has 
its origin in their food, as that of the steam-engine comes from its 
fuel. This view led him to make his elaborate experiments on 
the different varieties of food, as to which imparted the largest 
amount of vital force to the human organization: the great 
variety of careful and exact experiments he made demonstrating 
the precise power of heat. He also made similar experiments in 
regard to hydrogen and other gases. 

Professsor Youmans thus speaks of America’s two eminent 
scientist:— “It is a matter of just national pride that the 
two men who first demonstrated the capital propositions of 
pure science, that lightning is but a case of common electricity 
and that heat is but a mode of motion, — who first converted 
these conjectures of fancy to facts of science,—were not only 
Americans by birth and education, but men eminently repre¬ 
sentative of the peculiarities of American character: Benjam n 
Eranklin and Benjamin Thompson.” 

Thompson was tall in stature, and was considered a model of 
manly beauty in form and feature. If there were some defects 
of character, if he was inclined to be aristocratic, or had a par¬ 
tiality to the grandeur and fashion of the Court, he was still 
a glorious character. He pretty clearly discerned the princi¬ 
ple of the Correlation of forces, and ably distinguished between 
true science and the false. Among the latter he distinctly 
classed mythology and Theology, — regarding them as the fig¬ 
ments of the human brain. He left a valuable legacy to the 
world of scientific and demonstrated facts. 


MADAME ROLAND. 


615 


MADAME ROLAND. 

This woman — one of the most noble, beautiful and gifted 
that France has ever produced —was the only child of an 
engraver named Philipon. She was named Marie Jeanne, but 
was more commonly called Manon Philipon. She was born 
March 17th, 1754. She early showed a fondness for books, 
Plutarch being her favorite author when she was but nine 
years of age. A liberal education was imparted to her while 
but a mere child, Lat n and music being included in the list of 
her studies. 

At quite an early age she became an enthusiastic devotee of 
’the Catholic Church, and at the age of twelve she persuaded 
her parents to send her to a convent for a year. Later in life 
her faith in Christianity became greatly shaken; indeed, she 
became identified with the celebrated French school of skeptics. 
The following passage from her “Memoirs” indicates her more 
mature opinions about religion: “I can still attend with inter¬ 
est the celebration of divine worship when it is conducted with 
^dignity. I forget the quackery of the priests, their ridiculous 
fables, and their absurd mysteries. The woes of mankind, thi 
consoling hope of an all-powerful Remunerator, occupy my 
thoughts; all other fancies vanish;” etc. 

Upon arriving at womanhood she still cherished her youthful 
taste for study and seclusion, preferring the speechless society 
of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the old Greek hero-historian to 
the frivolous pleasures of the great heartless world. Her beauty 
attracted many suitors; their numbers were such that she 
.speaks of them as a levee en masse. 

She rejected them all, resolving to marry none but a phi¬ 
losopher. In 1775 she formed the acquaintance of M. Roland, 
an inspector of manufactures at Amiens, whom she character¬ 
izes as “a truly good man.” He was a man much older than 
herself, but one in whom she thought she discovered one of 
Plutarch’s antique republicans. After having considered the 


616 


MADAME ROLAND. 


subject for several years he offered his hand; but her father,, 
though he had recently become ruined in fortune by his dissi¬ 
pated habits, refused his consent. It appears that her mother, 
who was an excellent woman, had died previous to this time. 

Her father’s house having ceased to afford her a happy or 
even a comfortable home, she left it for the convent in which 
she had formerly lived. M. Roland again pressed his suit and 
his offer was accepted. They were married in 1780. After a 
brief residence at Paris, Amiens, and Lyons, she and her hus¬ 
band visited England in 1784, and Switzerland in 1787. M. 
Roland was a man of incorruptible honor and the most rigid 
rectitude, and he entertained the profoundest love and rever¬ 
ence for the pure and lofty mind of his wife. Both heartily 
sympathized in the revolutionary movement. 

The appointment of Roland to the National Convention by 
the city of Lyons drew them within the fatal and resistless 
eddyings of the great maelstrom of blood. He joined the 
Girondists, and during their day of power served as Minister of 
the Interior. As an enthusiastic votary of republican liberty, 
Madame Roland soon became the animating spirit of the party. 
By her fascinating manners, splendid genius, and unequaled 
conversational powers, she controlled the councils to such an 
extent that she became known as the “inspiring soul” of the 
party. At her house regularly assembled the great Girondist 
leaders, those masters of oratory and mistaken dreamers of 
Utopian schemes. She assisted her husband in his official duties 
while Minister of the Interior. The literary success of his 
reports entirely depended upon the part she took in their 
composition. She composed the celebrated letter addressed by 
her husband to Louis XYI, in May, 1792. 

At last the terrible struggle between the Girondists and the 
Terrorists commenced, and Paris w r as given up to the saturnalia 
of blood. Having been proscribed by the Jacobins, Roland 
retired to the country in May, 1793; but his wife remained in 
the great frenzy-smitten city, and was ere long compelled to 
defend herself at the bar of the terrible tribunal. In the first 
awakening of the September massacres she had expressed the 
presentiment that she wrnuld fall a victim to the red storm of 
insurrectionary fury. She was confined in various prisons, in 


MADAME ROLAND. C17 

one of which the future Empre.-s Josephine was her companion, 
for six months. 

She improved the time of her incarceration by writing her 
“Memoirs.” These are enlivened by anecdotes and portraits of 
the most famous personages of those troubled times. The 
style in which they are written are singularly pleasing and 
graceful. Count Beugnot once said, “I never heard any woman 
speak with so much ac uracy and elegance.” Like a true 
heroine and an Infidel, as she was, she serenely submitted to her 
last sorrowful prison trials,' and with tranquil fortitude and 
resignation gave her neck to the ghastly knife of the guillotine. 
On the 6th of November, 1793, she was taken in the terrible 
death tumbril from prison to the Place de Revolution and 
beheaded, On the passage she had a full view of the house in 
which she had spent the happy years of her youth. She left 
one child, Eudora, born in 1771. Her last words were, “ O 
Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!” 

Thus perished, at the age of thirty-nine, the mos gifted 
and graeeful of the Girondists, and one of the noblest and 
fairest apostles of Freethought and Republicanism that has 
acided a luster to the annals of la. belle Fiance. Says the Edin¬ 
burgh Review for April, 1865: “Viewed by that strange light of 
her own time Madame Roland stands out in noble'and lofty 
pre-eminence. Of her greatness, there can be no doubt.” 

“Peace be with her. She is dead;” 

but her memory shall live with those glorious names of females* 
scattered, like stars, along the pages of history; with hers 

“That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 
The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 

The Carian Artemisia strong in war. 

The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, 

Clelia, Cornelia, and with the Palmyrene 
That fought Aurehan 

with Sappho, the peasant Joan, Elizabeth, and others who have- 
vied with man in war and art, in government and literature. 


TALLEYRAND. 


US 

TALLEYRAND. 


It will be the only aim of this brief biographical notice to 
pimply render justice to one whose political career is perhaps 
unequaled in the annals of history. It is ever the fortune of 
supreme genius to be misunderstodd and misappreciated by its 
contemporaries. Standing immeasurably above all others in the 
altitude of greatness, its feet of clay can only be contemplated 
by the grovelling multitude below. But the generations increase 
in stature as the ages roll, the lofty head formerly wrapt in 
the blinding glare of greatness can be clearly discerned with 
level faces, and the ju-t judgment of posterity is finally meted 
out. Time will right all; and tardy justice will at last be ren¬ 
dered each who has not been assigned his proper place in. the 
intellectual development of mankind. 

These observations are peculiarly applicable to Prince Talley¬ 
rand, a man who without vio.ence, and by the sheer strength 
of his transcendent intellect, swayed the destinies of France 
and shaped the policy of the courts of Europe for a generation. 
Much has been written concerning him upon very questionable 
authority, while many professed memoirs of him are now known 
to be scandalous fabrications. 

This distinguished ind vidual was born at Paris on the 
.seventh of March, 1754. His full name was Charles Maurice 
Talleyrand de Perigord. His family was one of the most 
ancient in France, and among his ancestors were several sover¬ 
eigns of a country in the south-western part of France, still 
called Perigord. He was an outcast and an object of dislike 
Irom his birth, on account of being what is commonly called 
^club-footed. He was not allowed to live in his father’.- family; 
never , it is said having slept under the paternal roof. He was 
educated at the seminary of St. Sulpice, where he became 
marked as a taciturn and haughty youth, who spent all his 
time in study. Having been compelled to renounce his birthright 
and to enter the Church, he took orders at the usual age, 


TALLEYRAND. 


619 


though the profession was very distasteful to him. His splen- 
-did talents procured him rapid advancement. When only in 
Ms twenty-sixth year, the Abbe de Perigord was appointed gen¬ 
eral agent of the clergy of France (in 1780) and held this impor¬ 
tant office for eight years. In 1788 he became Bishop of Autun, 
and in 1789 a member of the States General. Even at this 
nearly period his superior talents had been announced to the 
world, and the highest dignities of the Church were already 
•opened to him. Mirabeau, in his correspondence with Berlin 
at this time, designated Talleyrand as “one of the most subtle 
.and powerful intellects of tr.e age.” 

As a member of the States General the youthful bishop 
•enlisted in the service of liberty and equality. He voted that 
the clergy should be united with the communes, which had 
been formed into a National Assembly. As a member of the 
the Committee of Government to form a constitution he pro¬ 
posed that every citizen should be admissible to public employ¬ 
ments; and with a zeal not exceeded by the most violent of his 
coadjutors, he proposed the confiscation and sale of the property 
of the Church, which measure was adopted, after a stormy 
debate of ten hours. In vain did the French clergy, and espe¬ 
cially the priests of his own diocese, petition and remonstrate. 
In surveying the moral and political horizon he clearly per¬ 
ceived that a mighty change was at hand; and adapted for any 
part in the great drama, he anticipated the progress of events 
with a calmness inspired by the confidence he felt in his own 
powers. His future eminence now became apparent to those 
who could best estimate human nature. Turning a deaf ear to 
the complaints of the clergy, and unmoved amid the storm 
which surrounded him, Talleyrand pursued his path unmoved. 
He foresaw what measures must eventually be passed, and he 
promptly introduced them. 

The numerous reports which he made on the finances and 
public instruction, and the many reforms and systems of organ¬ 
ization he recommended in all the departments of s;ate, proved 
to the political world the astonishing versatility of his talents. 
He was appointed by the Assembly one of the Commissioners 
to examine into the condition of the discount bank established 
•during the American War. In January, 1790, he became a 


620 


TALLEYRAND. 


member of the Committee of Imposts. In February he was' 
called to the chair of the Presidency, and drew up the famous 
Address to the French Nation. In June of the same year he 
succeeded in establishing a uniform system of weights and 
measures. In July he was deputed to officiate pontifically at 
the imposing religious ceremony for the celebrating of the, 
national federation. 

“On the appointed day all Paris moved in a mass to the- 
federation, just as it had moved the year before to the destruc¬ 
tion of the Bastile. In a line from the Military School steps- 
had been raised, with a tent to accommodate the king, queen,, 
and court; at the other extremity was seen an altar prepared 
for mass, where M. do Talleyrand appeared at the head of two- 
hundred priests dressed in white linen and decorated with tri¬ 
colored ribands. When about to officiate, a storm of wind took 
place, followed by a deluge of rain, but, heedless of its pelt- 
ings, the Bishop of Autun proceeded in the celebration of the 
mass, and afterwards pronounced a benediction on the rojml 
standard of France and on the eighty-three banners of the 
departments which waved around it before the altar.” 

Soon after this he consecrated the constitutional bishops at 
Notre Dame. This called forth the thunders of the Vatican. 
The Pope denounced him ns “ an impious wretch, who had 
imposed his sacrilegious hands on intruding clergymen,” and 
declared him excommunicated unless he recanted his errors 
within forty days. Upon this Talleyrand resigned his bishop¬ 
ric, and gave his whole attention to affairs of state. 

In May, 1792, he was sent to London to dissuade the British 
ministry from joining the allies in hosti itics against France. 
He was admitted to several interviews with Pitt and Lord 
Grenville. He remained in England till April, 1794, when, with 
many others, he was ordered to leave the country within twen¬ 
ty-four hours. His sagacious mind perceived the blackening of 
the thunder-cloud in France, and he did not deem it prudent, 
to return. Ho took refuge in the United States, and thus 
escaped the fury of Bobespierre and his accomplices. Through 
the interposition of his friends, and more especially Madame 
de Stael, after the Reign of Terror had come to an end, he 
obtained permission to return to France, which he did in 1795.. 


TALLEY BAND. 


621 


Stopping at Hamburg a few months on his homeward voyage 
he formed the acquaintance of Madame Grandt, the lady whom, 
he afterwards married. 

Not long after his return to Paris, he was chosen secretary 
■of the National Institute. His famous Manifesto soon appeared, 
in which he set forth with his singular ability, the advantages 
of the sciences over religion, and recommended the continuance 
of a Republican Government. Again the ire of Homo was 
roused against the Infidel Bishop. Pius VII. issued another 
bull of excommunication against the author, w’ho replied by a 
scathing and sarcastic, as well as learned letter addressed to 
the Holy Father, which has become celebrated in Infidel litera¬ 
ture. He followed this with several essays and memoirs upon 
subjects of difficulty and vital public interest, which for the 
force, clearness, and eloquence of their style, distinguished their 
•author as one of the first writers of the age. 

His wonderful talents had now been tested in nearly all the 
departments of public life; the gaze of Europe was upon him, 
and France could not afford to have him unemployed. He was 
next the nation’s choice for the portfolio of foreign affairs. In 
discharging the duties of this appointment, it once fell to the lot 
of the ex-bishop of Autun, appareled in the blue national uni¬ 
form, with a sword by his side, to present to the Directory 
upon the same morning the nuncio of the Pope and the ambas¬ 
sador of the Grand Seignor. He was also called upon to intro¬ 
duce Bonaparte to his masters after the peace of Campo Formio. 

The life of Talleyrand was too eventful to attempt to trace 
the successive steps of his world-famed career in such a bio¬ 
graphical summary as this. He became the soul of the consular 
gover ment under Bonaparte. To him belongs the credit of 
obtaining peace with Austria at Luneville, and with England at 
Amiens. Napoleon wished to make him a cardinal, and to 
place him at the head of ecclesiastical affairs; but his uncon¬ 
querable aversion to the Church prevented his acceptance of 
the i reierment. 

In 1804, when the nation conferred upon Napoleon the title 
of Emperor, Talleyrand was made the Grand Chamberlain of 
the Empire; and in 1806, he was raised to the dignity of sover¬ 
eign prince of Benevento. After the fall of Bonaparte, Talley- 


622 


TALLEYRAND. 


rand was instrumental in the restoration of the Bourbons., 
When the allied enemies entered Paris, the Emperor Alexander’s* 
first inquiry was for Talleyrand. The Russian Czar sent him a 
message saying he would take up his quarters at his hotel. 
After the surrender of the Ereneh capital he was made Presi¬ 
dent of the Provisional Government. Such was his unbounded 
influence upon the populace, that when the King made his* 
entry into Paris, “he even obtained,” says Madame de Stael, 
“the cry of vive le roi! from men who had voted the death of 
Louis XVI.” 

Under Louis XVIII. Talleyrand was restored to his old situ* 
ation at the foreign office, and created a Peer by the title of 
Prince de Talleyrand. He represented France at the Congress 
of Vienna in 1814, and by sowing dissension among the allied 
powers, obtained more favorable terms of peace than his gov¬ 
ernment had expected. He resigned his office in 1815, because 
he would not sign the humiliating treaty which had been con¬ 
cluded with the allied powers. Before his retirement he suc¬ 
ceeded, after a severe struggle, in obtaining the ordinance by 
which the list of proscribed persons was reduced from two 
thousand to thirty-eight. Upon his resignation of the foreign 
portfolio, he was created King’s Chamberlain. 

During the reign of Charles X. he took no part in public 
affairs. Upon the abdication of Charles, he lost no time in giv¬ 
ing in his adhesion to the Government of Louis Philippe. 
Upon taking the oath, he remarked: “This is the thirteenth; 
pray God it may be the last!” He conti ued to act on embas¬ 
sies, and in negotiating treaties, till the close of his life. He 
died in 1838, aged eiglity-four years. For thirty-five years his 
name and genius had made him illustrious over the whole 
of Europe. The secret of his influence was that he never 
espoused the cause of any ultra party, but uniformly supported 
the established government. His constant aim was to direct 
public opinion, nut to oppose it. In a speech in the Chamber of 
Deputies, he expressed tiic whole spirit of his policy in this sin¬ 
gle phrase: “I know where there is more wisdom than is to be 
found in Napoleon, or VoLaire, or any minister past or present 
— in public opinion .” 

His career was unstained by violence or excesses; and while 


TALLEYRAND. 


62$ 


Bonaparte was wading through blood to attain the object of 
his ambition, Talleyrand in the foreign office gathered into his- 
hands the reigns of public policy, and like a skillful charioteer, 
guided the course of all the courts of Europe. In domestic life 
he was mild and amiable, He secured the devoted attachment 
of all in his employ. Among his intimate friends he used to 
indulge in jokes about his ecclesiastical profession. At court he 
was considered as a sort of controlling satirist. His was that 
good-humored, yet poignant irony, “which, while it stung, did 
not poison, and while it pricked, did not wound.” 

Talleyrand was distinguished for his subtle wit, his exquisite 
tact, his moderation, finesse, and singular self-restraint. He was. 
a profound thinker, and a cool and sagacious reasoner. His 
penetration was quick and piercing, and he was as daring and 
decided in action as Napoleon, but without Napoleon’s unreas¬ 
oning impetuosity. His unique genius and the amazing versa¬ 
tility of his talents made him the master-manager of the state 
affairs of Europe in his generation; and take him all in all, 
Prince Talleyrand may be considered one of the most wonder¬ 
ful characters that ever ajjpeared upon the political stage of 
the world. The following is extracted from his famous “Letter 
to Pius VII.” : — 

“Then be candid, most Holy Father, and frankly confess 
that whatever is good or sublime in the religion of your God, 
was plundered from Plato’s works, and that the morality of the 
Just Man, traced by the majestic pencil of this divine philoso¬ 
pher, ought never to have been called Christian, but Platonic 
morality, and therefore that your title ought to be ‘ The Ser¬ 
vant of God and Vicar of Plato.’ If the apostles had styled 
themselves Platonicians instead of Christians, or if they had 
modeled their doctrines on the morality of the 'Grecian Just 
Man, instead of adopting the gross compound of Jewish ethics, 
it is more than probable that neither the Roman Senate nor 
the tribunals would have proscribed their opinions; but these 
ignorant fanatics compiled a heterogeneous mass of that which 
was held most sacred in the ethics of the Just Man with all 
that was gross and licentious in Judaism —and this brought on 
them the just hatred and ill-will of every moral man. But 
what enraged above all the Homans and the philosophers 


624 


TALLEYRAND. 


of that time, was the stupidity and impudence of catechu¬ 
mens who sought out of Judea a mean wretch, and in their 
ravings made him Lord of Heaven, Earth, and the whole 
Universe. So barefaced was the knavery of these Christian 
priests that they hesitated not to make their puppet God talk 
in the most indecorous manner, that thereby they might have 
an apology for the gratification of their owa evil propensities. 
What audacity! what impudence! Were I sure, Most Holy 
Father, that there is a Supreme Being to resent such abomina¬ 
tions, I would call on his offended majesty to prepare his 
thunderbolts and to annihilate at one tremendous blow the 
whole brood of p>riests! It is a truth now well established by 
experience, that the only aim of priests is to fatten on the 
superstition of the grossly ignorant; and this 1.3 the reason 
why enlightened men have denounced the priesthood as a class 
always ready to avail themselves of the simplicity of their 
unlearned devotees, so that they might increase and preser\e 
their tyrannical sway over the children of men. It was the 
priesthood who put its veto on the Platonic morality, and 
prevented the first catechumens adopting it in ail i s puri.y: 
for the wily priests knew that the works of Plato would tend, 
not only to enlighten men, but also to expose and confound 
impowers. Yet, however much they hated Plato's ethics, the 
holy fathers did not reject them entirely, but were content, as 
it would still answer their perverse purposes, to sully them 
with the additament of ridiculous or monstrous Jewish institu¬ 
tions, to which were superadded a host of miracles, 

‘-Aye, sound ones too. 

Seen, heard, attested, everything — but trued ” 



YOLNEY. 


.625 


YOLNEY. 


Constantine Francis I>e Volney was born February 3d, 1757, 
at Craon, in Anjou. From his earliest youth he devoted him¬ 
self to the search after truth. At the age of seventeen, after 
having studied the ancient languages at the colleges of Ancenis 
and Angers he proceeded to Par's to perfect his scientific 
studies, more particularly in physiology and medicine. At this 
time he was in possession of fifty pounds a year, inherited from 
his mother; but in 1783, upon suceeding to a larger legacy, he 
relinquished his school studies, resolved to employ his patri¬ 
mony in acquiring a new fund of information. 

He started on foot for Egypt and Syria, with a knapsack on 
his back, a gun on his shoulder, and two hundred and forty 
pounds in gold concealed in a belt. Instead of learning the 
language of these countries in Europe, he waited till he arrived 
in Egypt, and then shut himself up for eight months in a 
Coptic monastery, where he made himself master of Arabic, an 
idiom spoken by so many nations of the East. He traveled 
over Egypt and Syria, and after an absence of four years 
returned to France. 

In 1787 he published his “Voyage en Egypte et en Syne,” 
which was esteemed the best description of those countries that 
► had appeared, and which was acknowledged by the French 
army, on their conquering Egypt, to be the only book “that 
had never deceived them.” Unlike other travelers, Volney 
does not interrupt his narrative by personal adventures. He 
gives no account of his hardships, nor the perils surmounted 
by his courage. He does not even tell us the road he took, the 
accidents he met with, nor the impressions lie received. This 
work obtained a rapid and general success in the literary world, 
and found its way into Hussia. The Empress Catharine, in 1787, 
Sent the author a medal as a mark of royal gratitude and 
esteem; but when the Empress, in 1789, declared against France, 
Volney sent back the honorable present, saying:— “If I ob- 


626 


YOL^EY. 


tained it from her esteem, I can only preserve her esteem by 
returning it.” But the revolution which drew upon France the 
menaces of the Bussian Empress, opened to Yolney a political 
career. 

The Government named him Director of Commerce and 
Agriculture in Corsica, but being elected a deputy in the assem¬ 
bly of the States-General, he resigned the Government appoint¬ 
ment, holding that a national deputy ought not in any case to 
be a pensioner. The first words he uttered in the assembly were 
in favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He advocated 
the admission oi the constituents and citizens, and supported 
the organization of the national guards, and of the communes 
and departments. 

He was made secretary on the twenty-third of November, 
1790, and in the debates which arose upon the power of the 
king to determine peace and war, Yolney proposed and carried 
the resolution that '‘The French nation renounce from this 
moment the undertaking any war tending to increase their ter¬ 
ritory.” 

At this time, when the question of the sale of the domain 
lands was being agitated. Yolney published an essay in which 
he lays down the following principles: “The force of a state is 
in proportion to its population; population is in proportion to 
plenty; plenty is in proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal 
and immediate interest — that is, to the spirit of property. 
Whence it follows, that the nearer the cultivator approaches the 
passive condition of a mercenary, the less industry and activity 
are to be expected from him; and on the other hand, the nearer 
he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor, the more 
extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his 
lands, and to the general prosperity of the State.” 

In 1792 he acconxpanied Pozzo di Borgo to Corsica, in com¬ 
pliance with invitations from many influential inhabitants, who 
sought his information. He there became acquainted with Bona¬ 
parte, who was then an artillery officer. 

Years afterwards, upon hearing that Bonaparte had obtained 
command of the army of Italy, Yolney remarked, “If circum¬ 
stances favor him, we shall see the head of a Caesar upon the 
shoulders of an Alexander.” 


VOLNEY. 


627 

He purchased a considerable estate in Corsica for the pur¬ 
pose of making experiments on all the kinds of tillage that 
could be cultivated in that climate. His success in naturalizing 
the sugar-cane, cotton, indigo, coffee, etc., drew upon him the 1 
notice of government. He was appointed director of agri¬ 
culture and commerce in the island, where with great difficulty 
he had introduced his new methods. He spent the most of the 
years 1792-3 in Corsica. On his return to Paris he published 
“An Account of the State of Corsica.’' This work being in 
part a political review of the condition of a population divided 
into factions and distracted by party animosities, subjected the 
author to the reproach and execration of the Corsicans, whose 
defects and vices he had also boldly denounced. They charged 
him with heresy. But he was exposed to a more serious charge 
alter his return. 

The terrible revolutionary fury was convulsing Paris; and 
Yolney, who, as a worthy citizen, a philosopher, and a deputy 
in the National Assembly had done so much for the peace and 
prosperity of France, was accused of being disloyal to that lib¬ 
erty", which then meant anarchy. He suffered an imprisonment 
of ten months. When li j recovered his liberty, after the terri 
ble epoch of blood and crime and political passion, he Was 
appointed Professor of History in the Normal school which was 
opened in 1794. 

Associated with Yolney in this celebrated institution were 
the most illustrious masters of that age in science and litera¬ 
ture; men like Monge, Sicard, Laplace, Montelle, Lagrange, 
and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Immense and applauding audi¬ 
ences attended the lectures of Yolney, which contributed to the 
literary glory of France. But having become disgusted with 
the scenes he had witnessed in his native land, and feeling 
again the passion for travel, which in his youth had carried 
him to Africa and Asia, he determined to visit America. When 
embarking, however, for this voyage, his emotions were very 
different from those he had felt in his youth when setting out 
for the lands of the East. Then in the prime of life, he joy¬ 
fully bid adieu to a land where peace and plenty' reigned, to 
travel among barbarians; now, mature in years, but dismayed 
at the spectacle and experience of injustice and persecution, it 


628 


YOLNEY. 


was with diffidence, as he tells us, that ho went to implore 
from a free people an asylum for a sincere friend of that liberty 
which had been so jn'ofaned in France. 

He reached the United States in 1795, and was cordially 
received by "Washington, who publicly bestowed upon him 
many marks of honor and friendship. While he was absent in 
America the Institute at Paris had attained the most distin¬ 
guished rank among the learned societies of Europe; and his 
name was now inscribed in the illustrious Institute, and new 
rights and academic honors were conferred on him. 

He returned to France in 1798, and gave up to his mother- 
in-law the property which he had inherited upon the death of 
his father. Bonaparte sought to win his esteem and assistance, 
soliciting him as a colleague in the consulship. The office of 
Minister of the Interior was also urged upon him. But he 
declined both. It is very seldom, indeed, that men have been 
found disinterested enough to reject such inducements to accept 
office as were held out toYolney. It has been observed of him, 
that “although he refused to work with the ruling j>owers of 
that day, he never ceased to work for the people.” 

Up to the last year of his life lie was occupied in giving to 
the world that literature which has immortalized his name. 
The following is a list of his works, with date of publication: 
“Travels in Egypt and Syria,” 1787; — “Chronology of the 
Twelve Centuries that preceded the entrance of Xerxes into 
Greece“Considerations on the Turkish War” —1788; “The 
Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires ” —1791; 
“Account of the Present State of Corsica” —1793; “The Law 
of Nature, or Physical Principles of Morality ”—1793; “On the 
Simplification of Oriental Languages ” 1795; “A Letter to Dr. 
Priestley” —1797; “Lectures on History” —1800; “On the Cli¬ 
mate and Soil of the United States of America” —1803; “ Report 
made to the Celtic Academy;” “ The Chronology of Herodotus ” 
'*—1808; “New Researches on Ancient History ”—1814; “The 
European Alphabet ” — 1319; “ A History of Samuel ” — 1819; 
“Hebrew Simplified” —1820. 

Few have been more respected while living, and esteemed 
when dead, than Volney, by those whose respect and esteem it 
is always an honor to possess. He died in Paris, April 20th, 


VOL KEY. 


629 


1820, at the age of sixty-three, from a disorder of the bladder, 
contracted when traversing the Arabian deserts. Laya, Director 
of the French Academy, pronounced a noble panegyiic over liis ; 
grave; and long after his death the learned and noble Yolney 
was the subject ef the highest praise of the most illustrious 
men of France. His “Bums” is a book which will immortalize 
him in the memory of Freethinkers. He was an Infidel, and 
one whose name honored the list of the French Senate and the 
House of Peers. He traveled the four quarters of the world, 
observed the social state of men in different countries, and read 
the lessons of history amidst the ruins of time and the wrecks 
of many a splendid dynasty. His public life, his conduct in the 
French Assembly, his independent principles, the nobleness of 
his sentiments, the stability of his character, the wisdom of his 
opinions, and his vast erudition, gained him the esteem of the 
great and good of every land, and gave a glory to his memory 
that shall brighten as the ages roll, and the race shall learn to 
love and honor its Sages, Infidels, and Thinkers. 

Few men wrote more on various topics than Yolney. The 
superior merit of his “Bums,” the originality and beauty of its 
style, its unequaled elegance and eloquence, make it one of the 
most valued acquisitions to Liberal literature. No Infidel 
should be without it. Want of space prevents justice being 
rendered in the necessarily brief extract selected for this place 
— as follows: 

“Impostors have arisen on the earth who have called them¬ 
selves the confidants of God, and who, erecting themselves into 
teachers of the people, have opened the ways of falsehood and 
iniquity; they have ascribed merit to practices indifferent or 
ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue in certain postures, in 
pronouncing certain words, articulating certain names; they 
have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats, the 
drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than on another. 
The Jew would rather die than labor on the Sabbath; the Per¬ 
sian would endure suffocation before he would blow the fire 
with his breath; the Indian places supreme perfection in be¬ 
smearing himself with cow-dung and pronouncing mysteriously 
Aum; the Mussulman believes lie has expiated everything in 
washing his head and arms, and disputes, sword in hand. 


630 


YOLNEY. 


whether the ablution should commence at the elbow or finger- 
ends; the Christian would think himself damned, were he to 
eat flesh instead of milk or butter. 0, sublime doctrines! doc¬ 
trines truly from Heaven! O, perfect morals, and worthy of 
martyrdom or the apostolate! I will cross the seas to teach 
these admirable laws to the savage people, to distant nations; 
I will say unto them, ‘Children of Nature, how long will you 
walk in the paths of ignorance? How long will you mistake 
the true principles of morality and religion ? Come and learn 
its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in civilized 
countries; they will inform you how, to gratify God, you must 
in certain months of the year languish the whole day with hun¬ 
ger and thirst; how you may shed your neighbor’s blood, and 
purify yourself from it by professions of faith and methodical 
ablutions; how you may steal his property and be absolved on 
sharing it with certain persons, who devote themselves to its 
consumption.’ 

“ And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your prac- 
tices! In so many centuries, during which you have been 
following or altering them, what changes have your prescrip¬ 
tions wrought in the laws of nature ? Is the sun brighter ? Is 
the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more fruitful, 
or its inhabitants more happy ? If God is good, can your pen¬ 
ances please him ? If infinite, can your homage add to his 
glory? If his decrees have been formed on foresight of every 
circumstance, can your prayers change them ? Answer, incon¬ 
sistent men! 

“Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! 
doth he need your aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not 
earthquakes, volcanoes, and thunders at command ? And can 
not a merciful God correct without extermination? 

“Ye Mussulmans,.if Gcd chastiseth you for violating the five 
precepls, how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? 
If he governeth the earth by the Koran, on what principles did 
he judge, before the days of the prophet, so many nations who 
drank wine, ate pork, went not to Mecca, and whom he never¬ 
theless permitted to raise powerful empires? How did he judge 
the Sabeans of Nineveh and of Babylon; the Persian, worshiper 
of fire; the Greek and Homan idolaters: the ancient kingdoms 


VOLNEY. 


631 


of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians and Tartars ? 
How doth lie yet judge so many nations who deny or know 
not your worship; the numerous castes of Indians, the vast 
empire of the Chinese, the sable race of Africa, the islanders of 
the ocean, the tribes of America? 

“ Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to 
yourselves! if God were to unite together all the generations 
past and present, what would be, in their ocean, the sects, 
calling themselves universal, of Christians and Mussulmans ? 
What would be the judgments of his equal and common justice 
over the real universality of mankind ? Therein it is that your 
knowledge loseth itself in incoherent mysteries; it is there that 
truth shines with evidence; and there are manifested the 
powerful and simple laws of justice and reason — laws of a 
common and general mover; of an impartial and just God, who 
sheds rain on a country without asking who is its prophet; 
who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of men, on 
the white as on the black, on the Jew, the Mussulman, the 
Christian, and the Idolater; who rearetli the harvest wherever 
cultivated with care; who prospereth every empire where justice 
is practiced, where the powerful man is restrained, and the poor 
protected by the laws —where the weak live in safety, and 
every one enjoys the rights given him by nature and a compact 
formed in justice.” 

“ Nature has established laws, your part is to obey them; 
observe reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man 
which ruins him, let his wisdom save him. The people are 
ignorant, let them acquire instruction; their chiefs are wicked, 
let them correct and amend; for such is Nature’s decree. Since 
the evils of sciety spring from cupidity and ignorance, men will 
never cease to be persecuted till they become enlightened and 
wise; till they practice justice, founded on a knowledge of their 
relations, and of the laws of their organization.” 


632 


CABANIS. 


CABANIS. 


The founder of the Physiological Method (truly so-called,) in 
Psychology was Cabanis. Locke merely began to dig a place 
wherein to lay the foundations of that last and best of methods* 
“The Experience-hypothesis would not suffice to explain all 
phenomena . . . ; there were forms of thought neither reduci¬ 

ble to Sense and Reflection nor to individual Experience. He 
[Locke] drew illustrations from children and savages; but he 
neither did this systematically, nor did lie extend the Compara¬ 
tive Method to animals. The prejudices of that age forbade it. 
The ignorance of that age made it impossible. Comparative 
Physiology is no older than Goethe, and Comparative Psychol¬ 
ogy is only now glimmering in the minds of men as a possibil¬ 
ity. If men formerly thought they could understand man’s 
body by dissecting it, and did not need the light thrown thereon 
by the dissection of animals; the were still less likely to seek 
psychical illustrations in animals, denying, as they did, that 
animals had minds. The school of Locke, therefore, although 
regarding Mind as a property of Matter, .... was really 
incompetent to solve the problems it had set itself, because its 
Method Was imperfect, and ils knowledge incomplete. The 
good effect of its labors was positive; the evil, negative. Fol¬ 
lowing out this positive tendency, we see Hartley and Darwin 
advancing still nearer to a true method; — by a bold hypothesis, 
making the phenomena dependent on vibrations in the nerves; 
thus leading to a still more precise and definite consideration of 
the organism. These were, however, tentatives guided by no 
distinct conception of the necessary relation between organ and 
function; and the Physiological Method, truly so-called, must 
be first sought in Cabanis. 

This eminent philosopher, author, and physician was born at 
Conac, near Saintes, France, iii 1757. His father was an advo¬ 
cate, who introduced valuable improvements in cultivation and 
rural economy, and wrote a valuable “ Essay on Grafting.” 


CABAN I S. 


633 


Possibly this may, without any far-fetched punning about the 
matter, have something to do, in the way of heredity, with our 
author’s skill in philosophically grafting the Science of the 
Mind on the Science of the Body. However that may be, in his 
youth we find him studying medicine, and then establishing him¬ 
self as physician at Auteuil, near Paris. There can be no doubt 
that this profession had a powerful influence in inducing him to 
make the attempt to physiologize Psychology. By a happy ver¬ 
sion of some parts of the “Iliad,” he gained access to the high¬ 
est society of Paris, where, in the house of Madame Helvetius* 
he cultivated the acquaintance of D’Holbach, Eranklin, Turgot, 
Condillac, D’Alembert, Diderot, Condorcet and Mira beau, which, 
last two he attended in their dying hours. Having become 
the personal and political friend of Mirabeau, lie assisted him 
with his pen, and when he was no more, wrote an account of 
his illness and death, (1791). In 1796 he was chosen a member of 
the Institute, and next year professor of clinical medicine in 
Paris. He married a sister of General Grouchy. In 1802 he pro¬ 
duced his most important work, “ The Delation between the Phy¬ 
sical System and the Mental Faculties of Man,” which soon made 
him celebrated throughout Europe, and which is very valuable 
to the philosophic student even at this day. In his youth, and 
until about the beginning of the present century, he held to 
the dogmatic atheism so prevalent at the time of the French 
Devolution. Among other doctrines he maintained that, “the 
brain secretes thought as the liver secret s bile.” But he after¬ 
wards materially modified these views. He died in 1808. 

“A disciple of Condillac, he nevertheless saw, more distinctly 
than any man before him, one radical vice of Condillac’s 
system, namely, the limitation of mental phenomena to sen¬ 
sations, and the non-recognition of connate instincts. . . . 

Cabanis had no difficulty in showing that Condillac’s limitation 
. was a contradiction of familiar experience, e. g., the 
manifold influence exercised by the age, sex, temperament, and 
the visceral sensations generally.” 

“As a specimen of inductive Psychology, we must not pass 
over in silence his experimental proof of instinct being devel¬ 
oped by certain organic conditions. He takes one of the most 
marvelous of instincts, that of maternal love, and having ana- 


634 


CABANIS. 


lyzed its physiological conditions, he says, ‘In my province, 
and some of the neighboring provinces, when there is a defici¬ 
ency of sitting hens, a singular jmactice is customary. We take 
a capon, pluck off the feathers from the abdomen, rub it with 
nettles and vinegar, and in this state of local irritation place 
the capon on the eggs. At first he remains there to soothe the 
pain; soon there is established within him a series of unaccus¬ 
tomed but agreeable impressions, which attach him to these 
eggs during the whole period of incubation; and the effect is 
to produce in him a sort of factitious maternal love, which 
endures, like that of the hen, as long as the chickens have 
need of aid and protection. The cock is not thus to be modi¬ 
fied'; he has an instinct which carries him elsewhere.” 

The conception of a possible Psychology, establishing it as 
one branch of Biology, and thus making Life and Mind corre¬ 
latives, is of itself enough to stamp Cabanis as a great Philoso¬ 
pher. The novelty of this conception, and the interest attached 
to many of his illustrations, made his work very popular for a 
time. But there soon came a reaction against his system as 
well as against the whole eighteenth-century Philosophy. “In¬ 
stinct was no longer regarded as determined by the organism, 
changing with its changes, rendered abortive by mutilation, and 
rendered active by stimulation; but as a ‘ mysterious principle 
implanted’ in the organism; a ‘something’ which, although 
essentially mysterious and unknowable, appeared to be perfectly 
well known to the metaphysicians.” 

But still another doctrine was soon to arise, based on and 
vindicative of Cabanis’ method, and destined to sweep off more 
than any other instrument, the cobwebs of the Metaphysical 
School. “Taking Physiology as its avowed basis,” it has “suc¬ 
ceeded, in spite of vehement opposition, in establishing itself 
permanently among the intellectual tendencies of the age.” 
That doctrine —true, false, or “mixed” as it may be—is 
Phrenology. 


GALL 


635 


GALL. 


Francois Joseph Gall, born in a village of the Grand Duchy 
of Baden, March 9th, 1758, was one of the most remarkable men 
and profoundest philosophers the world has ever known. 

His father was the Mayor of Tiefenbrunn, and his first des¬ 
tination, as his parents were Catholics, was to the service of the 
Church; but his inclination led him in another direction, and 
we may remark that one of the surest tests of intellectual great¬ 
ness is the ability to escape in early life from the hereditary 
trammels of every form of superstition. His studies were pur¬ 
sued at Baden, at Brucksal, at Strasburg, and finally at the 
medical school of Vienna, which then had a high reputation, 
and his life was devoted to the medical profession, in which he 
attained distinguished success. 

At an early period his mind was actively engaged in those 
inquiries, the prosecution of which in his riper years attracted 
the world’s attention and made a new era in science and phi¬ 
losophy. He observed that his schoolmates were distinguished 
by peculiarities of mind and character, which were constant, as 
for example, arithmetical capacity, verbal memory, talent for 
natural history, or composition, for reasoning, for carving, for 
painting or drawing, while others were addicted to noisy sport, 
or to useful industry. The students who excelled him greatly 
in verbal memory, he observed, had in all cases very prominent 
eyes. Finding this rule to hold good in the schools that he 
attended, he believed it to be a correct sign, and thought it 
probable there might be other signs for other faculties, and pur¬ 
suing his observations, thought he discovered peculiar forms of 
head which were associated with talents or inclinations for 
painting, for music, and for the mechanical arts, and with firm¬ 
ness of character. These forms he ascribed not to the skull, 
but to the brain; yet in referring the moral sentiments to the 
brain, he found that he was contradicting the opinions of his 
predecessors, some of whom gave principal locations to our fac¬ 
ulties in the thorax or in the abdomen, in the heart, the head, 


636 


i 


GALL. 


the liver, etc., but the majority of whom regarded men as crea¬ 
tures of education without any natural character, being born 
with equal capacities. 

In 'liis researches he found books of little value, for instead 
of speaking of men’s real capacities and passions as found in 
musicians, mechanics, poets, travelers, philosophers, linguists, 
soldiers, misers, thieves, etc., they spoke of abstract powers, 
such as perception, conception, sensation, imagination, judg¬ 
ment, etc., which he found it impossible to associate with any 
natural sign. Giving up these metaphysical theories, he became 
an industrious observer of men, not only in the lunatic asylum 
to which he had been chosen a physician, but in schools, courts, 
prisons, and society generally, wherever especially he could 
meet with persons distinguished by any peculiar traits of char¬ 
acter. Having thus arrived at the outline of a theory of cereb¬ 
ral development, and the traits of character indicated by the 
form of the head, he found it urgently necessary to obtain a 
more correct knowledge of the brain itself than was to be ob¬ 
tained from the anatomists of that period, who merely sliced it 
up as an amorphous mass, knowing nothing of its true place 
and structure as a fibrous organ. 

His general plan or theory was outlined in a brief publica¬ 
tion in 1791, and in a letter to Baron Retzer in 1798, ihe coinci¬ 
dence of which with his subsequent publications is a sufficient 
refutation of the recent rather fanciful charge of Mr. Lewes 
that the doctrine underwent fundamental changes in its prog¬ 
ress. Certainly Dr. Spurzheim would have known it if such had 
been the fact. In 1796 he commenced giving lectures in Vienna, 
which he continued until the ninth of January, 1802, when the 
Austrian Government prohibited their continuance on the pre¬ 
tense that they were dangerous to religion /—thus feebly imitat¬ 
ing the action of the Papal authority against Galileo. 

During this period his doctrines had been brought before the 
public by the publications of Walter, Froriep and Martens at ^ 

Leipsic and Zurich, and he obtained the valuable aid of Dr. 
Spurzheim, who came as a pupil in 1800, and after 1804 became 
his public colleague, and was his constant companion for nino 
years, giving great aid in dissection and in lectures. From 1804 
to 1807 they were before the public in Germany, visiting all the 


GALL. 


C37 


principal cities, and received with great honor in the Boyal 
courts and the universities, giving many striking illustrations 
of the power of his system to reveal character, as when he vis¬ 
ited the prisons of Berlin and Spandau. In 1807 he established 
his residence in Paris, where he remained until his death in 
1828. Here he came into contact and collision with the most 
eminent savans of the day, who were inspired by the hostile 
feelings of Napoleon, and therefore unwilling to do justice to 
his discoveries. They were not only jealous and unfriendly to¬ 
ward the man assailed by the hostility of the rulers of Austria 
and France, but were scarcely competent to pronounce upon his 
anatomical discoveries, developed in a “ Memoir on the Anat¬ 
omy of the Nervous System,” addressed by Gall and Spurzheim 
to the French Institute in 1808. In common law it is the right 
of every man to be tried by a jury of his peers; but in the 
progress of science this right is seldom conceded. Kepler, 
Galileo, Newton and Gall were men without peers , condemned 
to be judged by their inferiors, and have justice withheld or 
tediously postponed. 

The anatomy of the brain was in as chaotic a condition be¬ 
fore the time of Gall, as astronomy before the time of Coper¬ 
nicus or Physics before Galileo, while its physiology was totally 
unknown. The novelty, the extent, the value and the revolu¬ 
tionary character of his discoveries are more remarkable than 
those of any other intellectual achievements from the days of 
Hipparchus and Archimedes to the nineteenth century. They 
were nothing less than the creation of the new science , or rather 
the twin sciences of Cerebral Anatomy and Phrenology—the 
sciences of the mind and of the master organ of the body. We 
may rightly say that these sciences were new creations by the 
genius of Gall, for there was nothing analogous to the new 
mental science then in existence. It was an absolute contrast 
to all the notions of psychology that were current in the writ¬ 
ings of Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant. If 
Gall was a discoverer, all these metaphysical systems belonged 
to the rubbish of the past, and the consciousness of this roused 
the vigorous hostility of the universities, which were occupied 
by the speculative metaphysics derived from the Greeks, as in 
the days of Galileo they were occuihed by the speculative 


638 


GALL. 


physics of Aristotle. To the medical profession Gall introduced 
a new anatomy of the brain, showing that it was not a pulpy 
mass of unknown functions, but the master-piece of creation, 
haying the highest functions of life, and exercising them not 
by a homogeneous pulp, but by a most intricate fibrous arrange¬ 
ment, which he traced from the Medulla oblongata to the reunion 
of the white fibres in the corpus callosum . Even the now 
familiar fact of the decussation of fibres in the medulla oblon¬ 
gata, which connects each half of the brain with the opposite 
half of the body, was first definitely established by Gall. 

All this was new; but what was most astounding was that 
he actually unfolded the brain according to the method that 
nature sometimes exhibits in cases of hydrocephalus, and thus 
exhibited its natural formation in the embryo, which was long 
afterwards confirmed by the elaborate researches of Tiedemanu 
in embryology. This new dissection not only gave a new theory 
of the cerebral structure, but solely puzzled some of his con¬ 
temporary antagonists, who, being unwilling to take lessons 
from him, were unable to dissect the brain like his pupils. The 
leaders of the Institute were really but little acquainted with 
the brain, and Cuvier could have become a private pupil of 
Gall if the Emperor had smiled upon him. But Gall was not 
lacking for friends and admirers. Conisant, Napoleon’s physi¬ 
cian, did his best to overcome the blind hostitity of the Em¬ 
peror; Eossati, Broussais and Andral were among his follow¬ 
ers, the latter two really standing at the head of the profession. 
The most eminent anatomists of Germany—such men as Reil, 
Loder and Bischoff—recognized Gall’s preeminence, and their 
voluntary testimony was worth more than that of all the French 
Institute, for they really knew more of the brain by their own 
elaborate dissection. Reil declared that he “found more in 
Gall’s dissections of the brain than he could have believed it 
possible for any one man to discover in his whole life.” The 
illustrious Hufeland spoke of Gall as a man “entirely exempt 
from prejudice, charlatanism, deceit and metaphysical reveries,” 
whose doctrines ought to be considered as “one of the most 
remarkable phenomena of the eighteenth century, and one of 
the most important and boldest advances that have been made 
in the study of Nature.” 


GALL. 


G39 


A noble tribute to the wisdom of Gall was the great work 
of Dr. Vimont on the brains and crania of animals. His re¬ 
searches were undertaken without any definite knowledge of the 
system of Gall, and even with a prejudice against it, but really 
constitute a valuable contribution to phrenology. Another noble 
tribute was the popular and admirable treatise by George 
Combe of Edinburgh, a profound and beautiful exposition of 
the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim, which in its way has never 
been equalled. 

To such men as Gall, contemporaries cannot do justice. His 
sj'stem of science was above and beyond the limited sphere of 
institutes and universities—it appealed to posterity. The future 
of phrenology will doubtless be worthy of its origin. The dis¬ 
coveries of Gall have been substantially confirmed by the 
progress of physiology and pathology, by the experiments of 
S. Ferrier on animals, and the experiments of Dr. Buchanan 
on the living brain, which although they correct the errors 
and enlarge the scope of the science, show that in the main 
Gall was right. While criticising the Gallean system for 
its incompleteness, Prof. B. remarks, “No one has a higher 
appreciation than myself of the majestic thought and origin¬ 
ality of Dr. Gall, to whom posterity will probably give the title 
of Father of Philosophy. His claims to such a title rest on the 
fact that he first dissipated the darkness enveloping the master 
organ of the human body, the brain, and having thus contrib¬ 
uted vastly more to physiology than any other individual, he 
also gave us the first practical science of human nature and 
superseded the worthless systems of metaphysics. Upon this 
science of human nature as founded by Gall, must rest our 
hopes of a true philosophy for education, morals and social 
progre8s. ,, 


640 


MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. 


M A R Y WOLLSTONECRAFT. 

This celebrated English authoress and reformer was born in 
1759. The place of her birth is not unquestionably known; but 
when she was about sixteen years old her parents removed to 
the vicinity of London. The family was quite poor, with but 
very few of the comforts of home. Her father’s temper, more¬ 
over, was violent, and she suffered severely on that account. 
Her early training was very defective. But this thrust her on 
her own native resources of head and heart, which were great 
and unique. She determined to be free from all unjust restraint. 
Having by her own exertions fitted herself to be a teacher, she 
opened a school at Islington in 1783, in which she was assisted 
by two sisters and an intimate friend. In 1786 she published 
her first, work, entitled “Thoughts on the Education of Daugh¬ 
ters.” Then followed her translation into English of Salzmann’s 
“Elements of Morality” and Lavater’s “Physiognomy.” In 
1791 appeared her reply to Burke’s “Reflections on the French 
Revolution,” which was soon followed by the very able and 
suggestive work by whieh she is best known —her “Vindica¬ 
tion of the Rights of Woman.” Of this more anon. In 1792 
she visited Paris, where she wrote “A Moral and Historical 
View of the French Revolution.” While in France she formed 
an unfortunate attachment to an American named Imlay, who 
soon deserted her; in consequence of which she twice attempted 
to commit suicide. In 1795, having business in Norway, she 
traveled in that country and in Sweden, and on her return, 
published “Letters from Norway.” This work shows great 
shrewdness and powers of observation, and contains many fine 
descriptive passages. 

In 1796 she was married to Godwin, the celebrated novelist 
and philosopher. The next year she died, after giving birth to 
a daughter, who became the wife of the poet Shelley. 

Mary Wollstonecraft will ever stand in history as the modern 
pioneer of “Woman’s Rights,” political and social. The argu- 


MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. 


641 


ments which she adduces in her celebrated book, the “Vindica¬ 
tion of the Rights of Woman,” are, most of them, excellently 
put. No wonder that, in these days of “Woman’s Suffage” 
agitation, her book has become one of the Classics of the Cam¬ 
paign. Her life — filial and wedded — naturally led to her stern 
self-asserting theories. Her native common sense and strong 
natural logic clothed those theories with very respectable proofs 
and illustrations. And her somewhat romantic and adventurous 
career lent a halo to both theory and argument, which possi¬ 
bly had more to do with their almost wide-world diffusion and 
pretty general acceptance than even their intrinsic merit. 

We always naturally associate her name with that of her 
illustrious husband, Godwin, the author of “Political Justice,” 
the novels “Caleb Williams,” “Saint Leon,” “ Mandeville,” 
and “ Cloudesley,” and the “Treatise on Population,” “History 
of the Commonwealth of England,” and “Lives of the Necro¬ 
mancers.” Shelley also, with all the associations conjured up 
by his name, is resuscitated to head and heart the moment the 
subject of our memoir is mentioned. To him and his wonder¬ 
ful career, the reader will be ere long introduced. 

This sketch of a historical woman will, it is hoped, act as 
an incentive to the diligent reading of Mary Wollstonecraft’s 
works, especially her “Vindication.” This is not the place to 
descant on her doctrines. Her life has been fully incorporated 
among those men and women who stand as the highest of our 
Race, and her name will ever be a source of high inspiration 
to all classes, and especially to woman struggling for her inde¬ 
feasible rights. 


C42 


ROBERT BURNS. 


ROBERT BURNS. 

The collection of the World’s Thinkers and Lovers of Human¬ 
ity would be imperfect with the name of Robert Burns omitted. 
Though he had the failings incident to humanity; though ho 
was guilty of some excesses which his fastidious admirers 
might wish had never taken place, he was indeed one of the 
sweetest singers the world has ever produced; his warm, gener¬ 
ous, impulsive heart welled to overflowing with the most genial, 
humane sentiments, and he evinced that love of liberty, equal¬ 
ity and human welfare that will cause his name to be revered 
and loved so long as his language is spoken among men. 

Robert Burns was born in the town of Ayr, Scotland, Janu¬ 
ary 25th, 1759. His father was a poor man, a gardener and far¬ 
mer, who married rather late in life. Bobert was the eldest of 
seven children, and as his father’s strength gave out he was 
compelled to early assume the lead in the work of the farm. 
He was an active, athletic lad, and as a ploughman -was not 
surpassed among the farmers in his vicinity. When he was fif¬ 
teen his father gave up the farm near Ayr in consequence of 
the insolence and exactions of the factor with whom he had to 
deal, and tow r ards whom Robert felt little else than indignation. 
They removed into the parish of Tarbolton. A little before 
Robert was sixteen, as he says, he “ first committed the sin of 
rhyme.” In his case as in that of Sappho, and in fact of the 
most brilliant poets of the world, ‘*it was love that taught him 
song.” A “bonnie sweet sonsie lass” had been assigned him 
as a partner in the field, and he was charmed with the sweet¬ 
ness of her songs and the rich tones of her voice. It was the 
lass who first inspired him with the idea of composing songs. 
After this he attended a school some distance away to learn 
mensuration, surveying, etc., where he made good progress in 
his studies until another charming girl in the neighborhood 
drove trigonometry and mathematics entirely out of h's head. 
Poor Robert was particularly sensitive to these captivating 


ROBERT BURNS. 


G13 

influences. He says himself: “ My heart was completely tinder 
and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other.” 

Burns’ verses and songs, which he now produced, soon made 
him exceedingly popular in all the adjacent country, and he w 
was eagerly sought for at all parties and gatherings among the 
young people and unfortunately the examples that were some¬ 
times placed before him on these occasions were not of the best 
character. To this source is to be attributed much of the irreg¬ 
ularities and excesses with which he has been charged. 

When he was about twenty-five he formed a liaison with a 
young woman named Jean Armour, somewhat above his rank 
in life. She bore him twins. He had previously given her a 
written acknowledgment of marriage, but the anger of the 
girl’s father was excited to that extent, and the scandal was so 
current in the neighborhood, that he resolved to leave the coun¬ 
try. But before doing so, he was induced to publish a little 
volume of the poems he had written. They were favorably 
received, and paid him a clear profit of twenty pounds. This 
so encouraged our young author, and he was patronized so cor¬ 
dially by those in higher stations, that he abandoned going to 
America and was almost irresistibly drawn into the company 
of the learned, the gay, and sometimes the dissolute. Among 
his warm admirers was Lord Glencairn, whose friendship and 
kindness to him the poet never forgot. In 1787 he brought out 
a new edition of his poems, from which he derived a profit of 
five hundred pounds. Every house and cottage in the land had 
a copy of them; but the intoxication of his fame, with the gay, 
convivial circles it brought him into, tended seriously to con¬ 
firm him in the irregularities and indulgences begun some 
years earlier. 

In 1788 he openly declared his marriage with Miss Armour, 
and soon after was appointed an officer of Excise with a mis¬ 
erable salary of fifty pounds a year, which was afterwards 
increased to seventy pounds. In 1791 he removed to Dumfries, 
where he lived till his death. He did not get along well with his 
diminutive salary, and he knew well what it was to drink the 
cup of poverty; and alas! that was not the only cup of which 
he drank. The taste for intoxicating liquors became fixed, and 
it must be confessed he sometimes indulged to excess, though 


644 


ROBERT BURNS. 


rarely to the extent to render him incapable of discharging the 
duties of liis miserable office. 

He died in 1796 at the age of thirty-seven years. His funeral 
was attended by many thousand persons, including many of 
high rank, several of whom came from a considerable distance. 
Twenty years after his death a costly mausoleum was erected 
in the churchyard at Dumfries, whither his remains were trans¬ 
ferred in 1815. Great honors were done to his memory, and 
money enough was expended, which, could it have been afforded 
him when living, would have made his family comfortable and 
happy, and saved his sensitive nature many a bitter pang. 

“The most striking characteristics of Burn’s poetry are 
simplicity and intensity, — an intensity not limited to feeling or 
passion merely, but belonging equally to his imagination and 
his thoughts,—in which quality he is scarcely, if at all, inferior 
to any of the greatest poets that have ever lived. Some of his 
expressions are like brilliant flashes of light; in an instant the 
thought or sentiment is impressed upon the mind, never to be 
forgotten. His power of concentration is perfectly marvelous. 
In two short lines 

'The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, 

The man’s the gowd for a’ that,’ 

he says more than many able men could do in an elaborate 
essay. His “Tam O’Shanter” is truly an epic, and one of a 
high order. As an amatory poet, Burns has no equal among 
British bards.” As a lyric writer, the world has hardly pro¬ 
duced a greater. His songs are to-day in every cottage in his 
own loved Scotland, and they are also widespread over the 
entire civilized world. The sweetness and exquisiteness of 
Burn’3 songs are everywhere admired. 

In religion Burns was a skeptic —an unbeliever. Few men 
had a more utter contempt for the cant and hypocrisy of the 
priesthood than he entertained and avowed. While he pos¬ 
sessed an active regard for true excellence and worth, hi 3 
whole soul abhorred the baseless claims that the church and 
the black-coated gentry possess all the goodness and virtue that 
exists in the world. He had little confidence in the dogmas by 
which sectarians are governed. His better nature rebelled 


ROBERT BURNS. 


645 


ngainst everything which sought to place fetters upon the 
intellect and to compel a submission to the dicta of a privileged 
class. 

The attention of the reader is especially requested to the 
following extracts from Burns’ Poems. They present in unmis¬ 
takable guise, some of his “Thoughts on Religion:” — 

EPITAPH ON A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER. 

Here souter Hood in death does sleep— 

To liell if lie’s gane thither, 

Satan, gie him thy gear to keep. 

He’ll liaud it weel taegither. 

HOLY WILLIE’S PRAYER. 

Oh thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 

Wha, as it pleases best thysel’. 

Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, 

A’ for tky glory, 

And no for ony guid or ill 
They’ve done afore thee! 

I bless and praise thy matchless might. 

When thousands thou hast left in night, 

That I am here afore thy sight, 

For gifts and grace, 

A burn in,’ and a shinin’ light 
To a’ this place. 

* * * * 

O Lord! thou kens what zeal I bear, 

When drinkers drink, when swearers swear, 

And singin’ there, and dancin’ here, 

Wi’ great and sma’. 

For I am keepit by thy fear 
Free frae them a’ 

But yet, O Lord! confess I must, 

At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust, 

And sometimes too, wi* warldly trust, 

Vile self gets in; 


BOBERT BURNS. 


64€ 

But tliou remembers we are dust, 

Defil’d in sin. 

() Lord! yestreen, thou kens, wi’ Meg— 
Thy pardon I sincerely beg!— 

O may’t ne’er he a livin’ plague, 

To my dishonor, 

And I’ll ne’er lift a lawless * 

Again upon her. 

Besides, I further maun avow, 

Wi’ Leezie’s lass, * times, I trow; 
But, Lord! that Friday I was fou. 

When I came near her, 

Or else, thou kens, thy servant true. 

Wad ne’er had * her. 

Maybe thou lets’t this fleshy thorn, 

Beset thy servant e’en and morn, 

Lest he owre high and proud should turn, 
Cause he’s sae gifted; 

If sae, thy lian’ maun e’en he borne. 

Until thou lift it. 

Lord! bless thy chosen in this place, 

For here thou hast a chosen race: 

But God confound their stubborn face, 

And blast their name, 

Wha bring thy elders to disgrace 
And public shame. 

Lord! mind Gaw’n Hamilton’s deserts, 

He drinks, and swears, and place at cartes. 
Yet has sae mony takin’ arts, 

Wi grat and sma’, 

Frae God’s ain priests the people’s hearts 
He steals awa’. 

And when we chastened him therefor, 
Thou kens how he bred sic a splore, 


ROBERT BURNS. 


647 


4 >. / 


As set tlie world in a roar 
O’ laughin’ at us:— 

Curse thou his basket and his store. 

Kail and potatoes. 

* * * * 

O Lord my God! that glib-tongu’d Aiken/ 

My very heart and soul are quakin’, 

To think how we stood groanin’, shakin’,* 

And swat wi’ dread, 

While he wi’ hingin’ lips and snakin'. 

Held up his head. 

Lord! in the day of vengeance try him; 

Lord! visit them who did employ him; 

And pass not in thy mercy by ’em, 

Nor hear their pray’r; 

But for thy people’s sake destroy ’em, 

And dinna spare. 

But, Lord! remember me and mine, 

Wi’ mercies temp’ral and divine. 

That I for gear and grace may shine, 

Excell’d by nane. 

And a’ the glory shall be thine. 

Amen! Amen! 

In reading the above, it really seems as if the “Great Bob * 1 
was writing in a special vein of prophecy, describing almost in 
detail what was to happen a little less than a century after¬ 
wards in the vicinity of the great and wicked metropolis of 
America! The very characters of the cause celebre are pre-pro- 
duced nearly to the very letter! 

EPITAPH ON HOLY WILLIE. 

Here holy Willie’s sair-worn clay 
Takes up it3 last abode; 

His soul has ta’cn some other way, 

I fear the left hand road. 

Stop! there he is, as sure’s a gun, 

Poor, silly body, see him; 


648 


BOD EXIT DU DNS. 


Nae wonder lie’s as black’s the grun' g 
Observe who’s standing wi’ him. 

Your brunstanc devilsliip, I see, 

Has got him there before ye; 

But baud your nine-tail cat a wee. 

Till ance you’ve heard my story. 

Your pity I will not implore, 

For pity ye liae nane: 

Justice, alas! has gi’en him o’er, 

And Mercy’s day is gaen. 

But hear me, sir, deil as ye are. 

Look something to your credit: 

A coof like him would stain your name. 

If it were kent ye did it. 

Fare thee weel, Bobert Burns! “With all thy faults we love 
thee still!” Indeed, of those very faults thou madest thee a 
veritable Augustine’s ladder of experience and poesy, whereon 
thou hast ascended into the very heights of humanitary glory 
— a ladder far more serviceable than that of Jacob of yore, for 
along it the angels of Mirth and Pathos, Common Sense and 
Freedom, Free Thought and the Higher Life are ever alter¬ 
nately ascending and descending, and bearing us, in whatever 
plight we may find ourselves, their blessed messages of good 
cheer and consolation! 


THOMAS THORILD. 


619 


THOMAS THORILD. 


Thomas Thorild, a noted Swedish independent thinker and 
heretic, was born in Bohnstan, in the year 1759. After some 
years of study at Lund he removed to the capital, and made 
his entrance into the literary world by the advent of two 
poems, which he sent to the Utile Dulce Society. The judgment 
of the Society, as given by Ivellgren, though highly compli- 
mentar, was followed by adverse remarks, and Thorild took 
only the second prize. Besides some minor faults, he had used 
an unrhymed dactylic verse-foot, “an equally dangerous and 
useless novelty, at war with the general accepted good taste in 
belles lettres .” This criticism made a marked impression upon 
Thorild, and with his strong self-feeling and his original and 
accurate conception of a belles lettres critic’s vocation, produced 
a partial estrangement between Ivellgren and himself. # He 
attacked what ho deemed the arbitrary powers of the Society, 
and engaged in a conflict with Kellgren, and afterwards with 
Leopold, in which Thorild displayed peculiar critical abilities, 
and beeame one of the most important agents in the evolution 
of the nation’s literature. His “ Critic of Critics ” (1791) has 
been aptly styled the result of a “seer’s view.” It is not a 
little remarkable that the French esthetics of our day, as held 
by Taine and others, have in many instances come upon the 
same ground which the young Swede occupied nearly a century 
ago. 

His tastes appear to have been not exclusively literary. 
According to his own language, he even aspired to reforming 
the whole world. 

In 1786 he wrote his “Common Sense on Liberty,” the object 
of which was to influence the king, Gustavus III., to extend 
the freedom of the press. It contains manly thoughts in glow¬ 
ing language. But as it failed to produce the desired effect, he 
decided to leave his country for England, believing he would 
there find a more appreciative field of labor. He made the 


THOMAS T n 0 It I L D . 


650 

voyage in 1788, and his ambition seems to have been to build 
up in England a “ World-Republic,” composed of the world’s 
brightest geniuses who would be able to beat down their worldly 
oppressors and to introduce a new law, a new religion, and new 
customs, when the “golden age” of pure humanity could be 
realized. With this incentive, he published several w r orks in 
English, among others his “Poem on Cromwell,” but it failed 
to produce the result he fondly expected. It was at this period 
he published his “Sermon of Sermons,” of which the following 
extract may serve as a specimen: “It is evident that all the 
horrors and miseries of earth rest upon the heads of the priests; 
and that they are literally, as are their followers, but Christian 
Heathens. For Satan himself is a most nice and admirable 
divine, and all the devils are great theologians, and the least 
of them could out-preach all the preachers of Great Britain.” 

Thorild returned to Sweden in 1790 and resumed his former 
position as a literary and political author. He was soon drawn 
into a second controversy with Leopold, which was soon termi¬ 
nated in consequence of the death of the king. 

About this time the destiny of Thorild took an unexpected 
turn. He published a book termed “Honesty,” in which he 
vehemently attacked the monarchy and the then existing sys¬ 
tems of representation. For this he was arraigned before the 
Supreme Court and sentenced to imprisonment and a diet of 
bread and water for fourteen days, and the entire edition of his 
work w T as condemned to be destroyed. He appealed to the 
King’s highest court, which increased the sentence to four years’ 
banishment from the country. 

This harsh sentence was not wholly a disadvantage to Thor¬ 
ild, for by the intervention of Keuterhohn, he received a kind 
of traveling stipend, and within two years he was appointed 
Professor and Bibliothekaire of Greifswald. Here his lively lit¬ 
erary ability was displayed to the best advantage. He wrote in 
Latin several important works of a philosophical and literary 
character. He also lectured on “Sweden’s Scientific Men,” and 
historical memoirs, but it may be said he scarcely gained the 
measure of approbation justly due him. He was in advance of 
his time. In his “ Philosophic..1 Investigations in Sweden,” he 
gave utterances to many important truths which were reserved 


THOMAS THORILD. 


651 

for a Fichte, a Schelling, and a Hegel to afterwards bring to 
the notice of men. 

He wrote a work on “Hygiene,” and a remarkable one on 
“Woman’s Natural Highness,” (1793,) in which, with a clearness 
and sharpness, comparable with John Stuart Mill, ho main¬ 
tained Woman’s Rights. 

He has been called the Thomas Paine of Sweden, but he was 
not as radical nor as outspoken as the brave son of Thetford. 

Thorild’s last days were turbulent with vexations which fol¬ 
lowed from being compelled to house foreign warriors when the 
French overran Pommern. He died in Griefswald, October 1st, 
1808, before ho had reached fifty years, and he lies buried near 
the city, in Neuenkirchen’s grave-yard, where a tasteful monu¬ 
ment is erected to his memory. 

Subjoined is Thorild’s “Confession of Faith”: — 

“Have I Religion? Yes. Which? The true, unchangeable, 
general, all peoples’, all times’. The eternal religion which no 
other religion dares derogate, and which all are content to have 
for foundations. 

“ In what consists its power? In high and active thought 
for all truth and all virtue. In a living feeling of all that is 
beautiful, noble and just. Its effects are order, good will, peace, 
of which are born happiness and thankfulness to man, to God. 
See here the spring of Humanity, good, the terms of joy and 
calmness. 

“Its means are experience, reflection and enlightenment; its 
conditions a sound organization. 

“Saints and faithful ones abound in my religion —the most 
enlightened and virtuous men and women —mankind’s orna¬ 
ments and benefactors — Socrates and Marcus Aurelius — they 
that work for the highest, noblest and most Listing happiness 
and bliss. 

“My Heretics are, 1st. All stupid and raw souls. 2nd. All 
bad and corrupted and vicious. 

“My religion has only one commandment: Be good and be 
happy. 

“My Heaven is the soul’s peace and delight. 

“My Symbolic Books are the wisest men’s works. High, 
divine religion. It is there that ignorance and superstition have 


652 


THOMAS THORILD. 


deformed into so many thousand fictions and absurdities. It is 
these that Christianity vainly boasts of. 

“ My God is the infinite beautiful, infinite powerful, infinite 
rich, infinite beneficent Nature. 

“ My Hell , the soul’s anguishment and provokement. 

“My Immortality is the image and pre-sensibility in my 
soul of posterity’s admiration and blessings. 

“My Unblessed Eternity , the image and pre-sensation in my 
soul of coming generations’ curses. 

“My Pope is ignorance, —the positive orthodoxy. 

“My Reformation , the beginning of freethinking and phi¬ 
losophy. 

“My Luther is Lord Herbert Cherbury. 

“My Jerusalem , J. Thorild, (a noted Swedish preacher). 

“My Temple is Nature, or my soul in its tender and sweet 
condition. 

“My Sabbath , every pathetic and blessed moment. 

“My Devotional Exercises, enthusiastic and burning blessings 
to Nature, or my soul enjoying its-beauty and goodness. 

“My Bible is experience. 

“My Theology , reason.” 

Among other things, as conducive to social amelioration, 
Thorild wanted the big cities burned down and mankind armed 
to beat down their spiritual and worldly oppressors. Hut it 
should not be inferred that Thorild wanted to use violence, for 
in his letters he declares that his philosophy is the opposite of 
all \iolence. The great revolution Thorild would bring about 
was a clear and well-nigh unanimous understanding in a nation 
to enable it to say aright “ No” and aright “Yes.” All other 
revolutions he considered as nothing but political somersets, 
“which change not even a blockhead.” 

"We might fill several pages with Thorild’s excellent thoughts 
on “Art,” on “Critics,” on “Religion and the Priests,” and on 
“Truths and Men in advance of their time.” But we shall 
close with the following beautiful sentiment from his utterances 
on “Marriage and Woman:” —“The nobler a man is the more 
womanly he becomes in mildness of manner and very being; 
on the contrary, the worse a woman is the more she begins in 
all bad habits to resemble a man.” 


SAINT SIMON. 


653 


SAINT SIMON. 

I 

The reader will not, of course, confound the above name 
with the alias of the Apostle Peter, of olden time. This is 
Claude Henri, Count Saint Simon, a famous French philosopher 
and socialist. He was born in Paris in October, 1760, and was 
a nephew of Charles Francois, Bishop of Agde, and a relative 
of the Due de Saint Simon. 

“He was endowed with great energy of character. Having 
entered the army young, he served under Washington during 
the War of Independence. At the end of this war he spent 
several years in travel. He took little part in the French Bev- 
olution, but in partnership with Count de Bedern, speculated 
in confiscated property. They realized a large fortune; but 
Bedern appropriated all of it except $30,000. Saint Simon enter¬ 
tained or professed a conviction that his mission was to be a 
social reformer, for which he qualified himself by various 
studies. In 1801 he married Mile, de Champgrand, whom he 
divorced in 1802 because he wished to marry Madame de Stael; 
but she declined his offer.” He soon dissipated his money in 
projects, experiments, etc., looking towards the thorough “study 
of the march of the human spirit,” in order, eventually, to labor 
for the advan ement of “human civilization,” and the intro¬ 
duction of a “physico-political reformation.” In order to qual¬ 
ify himself for the task, he took up his residence near the 
Ecole Polytechnique, where he gave his whole attention, during 
three years, according to his own methods, to the study of 
mathematics, astronomy, general physics, and chemistry. He 
then removed to the neighborhood of the Ecole Medecine, in 
order, in a similar manner, to add to his stock of ideas regard¬ 
ing organized beings. Here he traversed the whole field of 
physiological science, and then contemplated a scheme of uni¬ 
versal travel. He then “experimented” on “novel situations,” 
“the confusion of good and evil,” “alternate play, discussion, 
and debauch,” “artificially realized old age,” and even “self- 


654 


SAINT SIMON. 


inoculation with loathsome diseases.” Truly a most stupendous 
preparation for his “physico-politicai reformation”! 

In 1807 he published a very valuable work — an ‘‘Introduc¬ 
tion to the Scientific Labors of the Nineteenth Century.” In 
1814, with the aid of his able disciple, Augustin Thierry, he 
produced “The Reorganization of European Society,” in which 
he elaborated his scheme of hierarchical communism, that is, 
a form of communism directed and regulated not by the prin¬ 
ciple of democracy, but by that of natural leadership in its dif¬ 
ferent departments. The spirit of his grand scheme is not by 
any means dead yet. Indeed, not only are there very success¬ 
ful communes in this country whose success is a proverb owing 
to the ivorking out of this principle, but this same principle bids 
fair to be the great modern factor in all successful business 
enterprises, combinations, co-operations, and communities. The 
Church, the State, and Social Life are also fast becoming thor¬ 
oughly inoculated by it, at the expense of the mere voting and 
discussing method which has so generally but unworthily pre¬ 
vailed since the French Revolution. 

In 1825 he published his most remarkable work — “New 
Christianity,” in which he maintains that Christianity is pro¬ 
gressive, and that therefore it ought, in these modern times, to 
be the all-including institution — government, church, school, 
grand industrial association, &c., all in one. His doctrines 
exerted great influence in France, and attracted many eminent 
disciples, among whom were Auguste Comte, Michel Chevalier, 
Hyppolite Carnot, and O. Rodrigues. His death occurred in 
1825. After his decease, Bayard, Rodrigues, and Enfantin were 
chief priests of the Saint Simonian sect—a sect which became 
and continued very numerous for a time, until its dissolution 
was brought about by the inevitable diverging tendencies of 
those troublous times. 


FICHTE. 


655 


*>\ .y • 


j FICHTE. 

In Berkeley the subjective nature of Knowledge led to Ideal¬ 
ism. Hume carried out the arguments of Idealism into Skepti¬ 
cism. Condillac referred the origin of Knowledge to Sensation 
by the confusion of Thought with Feeling, and thereby created 
the famous Sensational School. Then Beid became the incar¬ 
nation of Common Sense —the natural reaction produced by 
Idealism, Skepticism, and Sensationalism. No wonder that such 
a man as Kant, next on the scene, violently reacted from all 
this by recurring to the fundamental question respecting the 
Origin of Knowledge; and no wonder that this prepared the 
way for the advent of just such philosophers as Fichte, Schel- 
ling, and Hegel, in whom Pure Ontology once more, but for the 
last time, re-asserted its claim for a while, and led to rampant 
Idealism and Transcendentalism. 

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the second in order of the four great 
philosophers of Germany, was born near Bischofswerda, in 
Upper Lusatia, in 1762. He became a student of three univer¬ 
sities— Jena, Leipsic, and Wittenberg. He afterwards spent 
several years as a private teacher in Zurich, where he became 
acquainted and formed a friendship with the celebrated Pesta- 
lozzi. Leaving Zurich, after a very profitable stay, he visited 
Leipsic, Warsaw, and finally Konigsberg. Here he made the 
acquaintance of Kant, who at once recognized a brother phi¬ 
losopher of the true stamp, and who also gave him great 
encouragement to publish the result of his speculations. His 
first important work — the celebrated “Attempt at a Critique of 
every possible Kevelation ” — soon appeared, anonymously pub¬ 
lished. The attention which it attracted was very great, partly, 
perhaps, because it was at first generally attributed to Kant. 
The fame of this work produced for Fichte a call to the chair 
of philosophy at Jena, where he developed his metaphysical 
system, to which he gave the name of “Doctrine of Science,” 
(“ Wissenschaftslehre ”). In this he endeavored to construct a 


656 


FICHTE. 


priori all knowledge. “Fichte, who thought himself a true 
Kantist, although Kant very distinctly and publicly repudiated 
him, declared that the materials for a science had been discov¬ 
ered by Kant; nothing more was needed than a systematic 
co-ordination of these materials; and this task he undertook in 
his famous ‘Doctrine of Science.’” 

In Fichte’s system, “the ground of all certitude being in 
the a priori ideas, an attempt was made to construct a priori 
the whole system of human knowledge. The Ego was the 
necessary basis of the new edifice. Consciousness, as alone 
certain, was proclaimed the ground upon which absolute 
science must rest. Fichte’s position is here clearly marked out. 
His sole object was to construct a science out of consciousness, 
and therein to found a system of morals. . . . ‘ I have 

found the organ,’ he says, ‘by which to apprehend all reality. 
It is not the understanding; for all knowledge supposes some 
higher knowledge on which it rests, and of this ascent there is 
no end. It is Faith, voluntarily reposing on views naturally 
presenting themselves to us, because through these views alone 
we can fulfill our destiny, which sees our knowledge and pro¬ 
nounces that it is good, and raises it to certainty and conviction. 
It is no knowledge, but a resolution of the will to admit this 
knowledge.’ ” 

As to our conception of Deity, “God,” says Fichte, “must 
be believed in, not inferred. Faith is the ground of all convic¬ 
tion, scientific or moral. Why do you believe in the existence 
of the world ? It is nothing more than the incarnation of that 
which you carry within you, yet you believe in it. In the same 
way God exists in your Consciousness, and you believe in him. 
He is the Moral Order of the world; as such we can know 
him, and only as such. For if we attempt to attribute to him 
Intelligence or Personality, we at once necessarily fall into 
anthropomorphism. God is infinite: therefore beyond the reach 
of our science , which can only embrace the finite, but not 
beyond our faith.” 

Fichte ha l also a very original and profound, however incor¬ 
rect a Philosophy of History. According to him, as interpreted 
by one of his best students, “ the historian only accomplishes 
half of the required task. He narrates the events of an epoch. 


FICHTE. 


G57 


in their order of occurrence, and in the form of their occur¬ 
rence; but he cannot be assured that he has not omitted some 
of these events, or that he has given them their due position 
and significance. The philosopher must complete this incom¬ 
plete method. He must form some idea of the epoch—an Idea a 
priori , independent of experience. He must then exhibit this 
Idea always dominant throughout the epoch —and manifesting 
itself in all the multiplicity of facts, which are but its incarna¬ 
tion. What is the world but an incarnation of the Ego? What is 
an epoch but an incarnation of an Idea? . . . History may thus 
be divided into two principal epochs. The one, in which man 
has not established the social relations on the basis of reason. 
The other, in which he has established them, and knows that 
he has done so. . . . But Humanity does not pass at once 

from the first to the second epoch. At first Reason only mani¬ 
fests itself in a few men, the Great Men of their age, who 
thereby acquire authority. They are the instructors of their 
age; their mission is to elevate the mass up to themselves. 
Thus Instinct diminishes, and Keason supervenes. Science 
appears. Morality becomes a science. The relations of man to 
man become more and more fixed in accordance with the dic¬ 
tates of Reason. 

“The entire life of Humanity has five periods, i. The 
denomination of Instinct over Reason: this is the primitive age. 
II. The general Instinct gives place to an external dominant 
Authority: this is the age of doctrines unable to convince, and 
employing force to produce a blind belief, claiming unlimited 
obedience: this is the period in which Evil arises, hi. The 
Authority, dominant in the preceding epoch, but constantly 
attacked by Reason, becomes weak and wavering: this is the 
epoch of skepticism and licentiousness, iv. Reason becomes 
conscious of itself; truth makes itself known; the Science of 
Reason develops itself: this is the beginning of that perfection 
which Humanity is destined to attain, v. The science of Reason 
is applied; Humanity fashions itself after the ideal standard of 
Reason: this is the epoch of Art, the last term in the history 
of our species.” 


658 


MADAME DE STAEL. 


MADAME DE STAEL. 


Anne Louise Germaine Necker, commonly called Madame 
De Stael, was born in Paris on the 22d of April, 1766. She was 
the only daughter of Necker, the eminent financier before the 
revolution. Her precocity was extraordinary, and she received 
a careful education from her mother, who made great efforts 
to regulate her daughter’s vivacity and vehemence, both of 
intellect and temperament. She appears to have been the very 
incarnation of genius and impulse. Her father’s house was 
frequented by many famous Pronch Freethinkers and literati , 
and in her early youth she listened with interest and delight to 
the conversation of such authors as Raynal and Marmontel. 
Her health becoming impaired by hard study at about the age 
of fourteen, she was sent into the country to reside. At this 
period of her life her favorite author was Rousseau. Her first 
literary production was “Letters on the Writings and Character 
of J. J. Rousseau.” 

In 1786 she was married to the Baron De Stael Holstein, 
ambassador from Sweden, and received from her father an 
immense dowry. It appears that she, or rather her parents, 
preferred De Stael, who was a nobleman much older than 
herself, to other suitors, not because she loved him, but because 
he was a Protestant, and intended to reside permanently at 
Paris. 

Upon the outburs^ of the Reign of Terror her parents 
retired from France; but as the wife of the representative of a 
friendly power, she was allowed to remain. At the outset her 
sympathies were entirely with the revolution ; but the sufferings 
of the royal family at length awakened m her a horror of the 
abuses being everywhere perpetrated under the mmo of liberty. 
She even had the heroism to publish a defense of Marie 
Antoinette, under the title of “Reflections upon $he Trial of the 
Queen.” She made courageous and successful efforts to save 
the lives of those proscribed by the terrorists, but at last was 


MADAME DE STAEL. 


659 


compelled to seek safety in exile. In 1793 she retired to Eng¬ 
land. She made her residence near Richmond, with Talleyrand, 
Count de Narbonne, and other French exiles. 

Upon the establishment of the Directory, in 1795, she re- 1 * 
turned to Paris, and passed her time happily for the next four 
years. She was an advocate of constitutional liberty, and 
became the leading spirit of a party whose chief orator was the 
celebrated Benjamin Constant. Commanding a large circle of 
influence in political circles, she, from the first, divined and 
denounced the ambitious designs of Bonaparte. A mutual and 
invincible antipathy arose between her and the First Consul, 
who, jealous of her influence and affronted at her constant 
refusal to offer him homage, not only persecuted her but 
banished others because they sympathized with her. 

In 1800 she published her work “On Literature considered in 
its Relations witli Social Institutions.” In 1802 Bonaparte 
banished her from Paris, declaring that he left the whole world 
open to the eloquent and ambitious lad}', but reserved the 
French Capital for himself. By this edict she was forbidden lo 
reside within forty leagues of Paris, the social charms of which 
she deemed indispensable to her happiness. She thereupon set 
out upon a course of travel through Switzerland and Italy, the 
results of which were given in her novels entitled “Delphine” 
and “Corinne.” In 1803-4 she visited Germany, where she 
associated with Goethe, Schiller, and Schlegel. It is said that 
her brilliant conversation was listened to by those great Ger¬ 
mans “with vast admiration.” Says Goethe: “To philosophize 
in society means to talk with vivacity about insoluble problems. 
This was her peculiar pleasure and passion. More than once I 
had regular dialogues with her, with no one else present.” 

Her last novel, “Corinne,” established her celebrity as a 
writer. More than her other works, it displays remarkable 
insight and sensibility. Its immense success irritated Napoleon, 
and he renewed his persecution by ordering her to leave France. 
She settled in Coppet, Switzerland, where many friends came to 
console her. Among these were Sismondi, Schlegel, Constant, 
and Madame Recamier. 

In 1810 her great work on Germanyappeared, “ De l’Alle- 
magne,” which, Goethe observes, “ought to be considered a 


660 


MADAME DE STAEL. 


powerful battery which made a wide breach in the sort of wall 
raised up between the two nations by superannuated preju¬ 
dices.” “This work,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “for variety 
of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation of view, and com¬ 
prehension of mind, is unequalled among the works of women, 
and in the union of the graces of society and literature with 
the genius of philosophy is not surpassed by many among those 
of men.” 

In this production she portrayed the habits, literature, and 
political tendencies of the German people. Napoleon’s police 
seized ten thousand copies of this book as soon as published. 
From her retreat on the beautiful banks of Lake Geneva, Mad¬ 
ame de Stael protested against this dastardly act. The Minister 
of Police made this answer: “Your last work is not French, 
and I have stopped its publication. Your exile is a natural 
consequence of your constant behavior for years past. I have 
thought that the air of France was not suitable to you, for we 
are not yet reduced so low as to seek for models among the 
nations you admire.” 

In order to escape the galling system of espionage to which 
she was subjected by the French detectives, she repaired for a 
time to Russia, and afterwards to England. Upon the abdica¬ 
tion of her imperial foe in 1814, she returned to Paris, and was 
allowed to remain even after his return from Elba. At the res¬ 
toration of the Bourbons, she retired to Switzerland, and never 
again interfered with politics. 

After the death of Baron de Stael, she married M. Rocca, a 
young Italian officer, in 1S12. In her retirement she composed 
her famous “Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise,” a 
work which gives a graphic account of the stormy period when 
France was torn by faction and delivered over to Republican 
fury. In addition to the above-named books, are her “Ten 
Years of Exile,” and a number of admirable essays, on the 
“Influence of the Passions,” on “Suicide,” and one on “Fic¬ 
tion.” 

She died in Switzerland in 1817. She had two sons and one 
daughter. One of the sons, Auguste Louis, born at Paris in 
1790, became distinguished as Baron de Stael, the famous phi¬ 
lanthropist, and an earnest and eloquent advocate of the aboli- 


MADAME DE STAEL. 


661 


tion of the slave trade. The daughter became the Duchess de 
Broglie. 

Madame de Stael was one of the most remarkable personages 
of a remarkable age. The most serious defect in her character 
was her unwomanly and insatiable love of fame. Even the 
great Napoleon became apprehensive of her political scheming, 
and jealous of her ascendency among the old nobility of the 
empire. Her personal attraction chiefly consisted in her eyes, 
which are said to have been magnificent. Aside from them she 
could not be termed a beautiful woman. But if she was not 
beautiful, like Marie Antoinette, she was lovely. No woman was 
ever a more perfect apparition of queenly grace and majesty. 
She possessed that rare and winning attraction which charms 
the heart and causes the rules of beauty to be forgotten. 

Her numerous works still maintain their reputation, and will 
preserve hers as long as the French and English languages 
shall be read. Her brilliant, vivacious style, her vivid and 
varied description give her a prominent place in the great 
republic of letters. Hers is among the most illustrious female 
names that brighten the constellation of genius. One thing, 
however, she lacked —Christian superstition —faith in the Paul¬ 
ine doctrine of the silence and subjection of woman. But this 
want of faith appears to have been common to all the truly 
great and gifted. Such names as Madame de Stael’s are never 
found in the annals of the Church: but they appear in immor¬ 
tal groups wherever the Goddess of Reason has been enthroned, 
as in France near the close of the eighteenth century. 


662 


HUMBOLDT. 


HUMBOLDT. 


Great men come in groups, and no period in the history of 
man is so luxuriant in illustrious names as the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. No year in the whole course of chronology is so memo¬ 
rable as being the birth-date of the world’s great prodigies as 
1769. Wellington, (May 1st,) Bonaparte, (August 15tli,) Hum¬ 
boldt, (September 14th,) —a triad of names that will make 1769 
forever glorious among the years. Humboldt was not great in 
the sense that Bonaparte and Wellington were. His victories 
were bloodless ones — were all achieved in the arena of thought. 
He led no armies to blood and butchery; he fought no Water- 
loos ; but he was the chief great leader of the world’s vanguard 
of investigators, the serene grand general of the hosts of intel¬ 
lect. He shed light, not blood; he destroyed ignorance, not 
armies; he was a conqueror for the sake of science, and not of 
glory. 

Fiiederich Heinrich Alexander, Baron von Humboldt, was the 
most illustrious savant and traveler that Germany, or indeed 
this earth, has ever produced. He stands in isolated grandeur 
among the great thinkers of his time. 

He was born near Berlin, in the old romantic castle of Tegel. 
He was born to wealth and nobility. His genius and his talents 
triumphed over these obstacles to intellectual development, and 
in spite of all the allurements of riches and pleasure, he became 
truly and grandly great. He received a most thorough educa¬ 
tion in natural science and political economy at the University 
of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In 1788 he went to Gottingen, where 
he became the pupil of Heyne and Blumenbach. Under the 
tuition of these, and the distinguished Knuth and Campe, the 
philologist and critic, he acquired the most thorough education 
at that time possible. 

From his youth he had felt a great desire for travel. He had 
an irrepressible longing to visit various lands, to study Nature 
in every clime, and the laws that govern the Universe. He 


HUMBOLDT. 


663 


early resolved to devote his life to the investigation of the 
physical phenomena of the world. In 1790 he traveled through 
France, Holland, and England, and published a book “On the 
Basalts of the Rhine.” 

In 1791 he studied mineralogy under the famous Werner at 
Freiberg, and was appointed director-general of the mines at 
Anspach and Baireuth the next year. In 1796 he resigned this 
office, determined to gratify his long-cherished passion for 
visiting far-distant and unexplored regions of the globe. After 
passing some time at Jena, where he formed friendships with 
Goethe and Schiller, and published a work “On the Irritability 
of Muscles and Nervous Fibres,” he joined Bonpland in a 
voyage to South America. 

Europe was too small for his investigations. Visiting the 
tropics of the New World, he sailed along the gigantic Amazon, 
the mysterious Oronoco, and climbed the crags of Chimbarazo 
until blood flowed from his eyes and lips. He pursued his 
investigations for five years in the wilds of the Western World, 
enduring innumerable hardships, and braving countless dangers 
for the sake of science. Accompanied by the intrepid Bonpland, 
he passed a year in the exploration of Mexico, visited the 
United States, and in July, 1804, returned to Europe with a rich 
collection of plants, minerals, and animals. He returned to 
Europe as the scientific Columbus —as the revealer of an 
unknown world. Paris became his place of residence. He 
resided there for twenty years, the greater part of which time 
he spent in publishing the results of his discoveries. 

Between 1807 and 1817 he (assisted by Bonpland, Cuvier, and 
others) published, in French, a “Journey to the Equinoctial 
Regions of the New Continent,” (3 vols.) “Astronomical Obser¬ 
vations and Measurements by the Barometer,” (2 vols.) “View 
of the Cordilleras, and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of 
America,” “Collection of Observations on Zoology and Com¬ 
parative Anatomy,” (2 vols.) and “ General Physics and Geology.” 
In 1810 he was chosen a member of the French Institute. He 
was welcomed to Berlin in 1826 with many marks of royal favor. 

Not satisfied with his discoveries in America, at the request 
and expense of Nicholas of Russia, in 1829, he made a scientific 
exploration of Asiatic Russia, crossing the wastes of Siberia 


664 


HUMBOLDT. 


and the great range of the Ural mountains, serving the cause 
of science at every step. The result of this expedition was his 
work entitled “Central Asia” (3 vols). Between 1830 and 1848 
he was sent to Paris by the King of Prussia on several political 
missions. During this time he published a “Critical Examina¬ 
tion of the Geography of the New Continent” (5 vols). When 
he was more than seventy-four years old he composed his 
celebrated work entitled “Cosmos,” the first volume of which 
appeared in 1845, and the fourth in 1858. This work consists of 
sixty-one free addresses, delivered at Berlin, for the benefit of 
the people at large, upon the following subjects: Five upon the 
nature and limits of physical geography. Three were devoted 
to a study of natural science. Sixteen were on the heavens. 
Five on the form, density, latent heat and magnetic power of 
the earth, and on the polar light. Four were on the nature of 
the crust of the earth, on hot springs, earthquakes and volca¬ 
noes. Two on mountains and the type of their formation. Two 
on the form of the earth’s surface, on the connection of conti¬ 
nents, and the elevation of soil over ravines. Three on the sea 
as a globular fluid surrounding the earth. Ten on the atmos¬ 
phere as an elastic fluid surrounding the earth, and on the 
distribution of heat. One on the geographic distribution of 
organized matter in general. Three on the geography of plants. 
Three on the geography of animals, and two on the races of 
men. 

These lectures present a grand picture of Nature, and estab¬ 
lish the sublime fact that the Universe is governed by law. 
Says Humboldt himself in the first volume: “It contains a gen¬ 
eral view of Nature, from the remotest nebulas and revolving 
double stars to the terrestrial phenomena of the geographical 
distribution of plants, of animals, and of races of men, — pre¬ 
ceded by some preliminary considerations on the different 
degrees of enjoyment offered by the study of Nature and the 
knowledge of her laws, and of the limits and method of scien¬ 
tific exposition of the physical description of the Universe.” 

No other man in Europe ever undertook and accomplished 
such a work as the “Cosmos;” and no man in the scientific 
world ever more justly merited the distinctions and honors he 
received than Baron von Humboldt. He became a member of 


HUMBOLDT. 


665 


almost every scientific body in the world; an associate of the 
Academy of Sciences of Paris and Berlin; was decorated with 
many orders, and was a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. 
By the labors of his long and valuable life he earned the title 
of creator of the science of comparative geography, and reviver 
of the study of the natural sciences. Perhaps no man, living 
or dead, contributed so much to the advancement of science and 
the real prosperity of the world, as Humboldt. It has been 
truly said of him, that he was the most learned man of the 
most learned nation. He died at Berlin, May 6, 1859, in his 
ninetieth year. 

“ Humboldt adopted none of the soul-shrinking creeds of his 
day: wasted none of his time in the stupidities, inanities, and 
contradictions of theological metaphysics; he did not endeavor 
to harmonize the astronomy and geology of a barbarous people 
with the science of the nineteenth century. Never, for one 
moment, did he abandon the sublime standard of truth; he 
investigated, he studied, he thought, he separated the gold from 
the dross in the crucible of his grand brain. He was never 
found on his knees before the altar of superstition. He stood 
erect by the grand tranquil column of reason. He was an 
admirer, a lover, an adorer of Nature, and at the age of ninety, 
bowed by the weight of nearly a century, covered with the 
insignia of honor, loved by a nation, respected by a world, 
with kings for his servants, he laid his weary head upon her 
bosom — upon the bosom of the universal mother —and with 
her loving arms around him, sank into that slumber called 
death. 

“ History added another name to the starry scroll of the im¬ 
mortals. 

“The world is his monument; upon the eternal granite of 
her hills he inscribed his name, and there upon everlasting 
stone his genius wrote this, the sublimest of truths: 

“ ‘ The Universe is Governed by Law.* ” 


666 


SCHELLING. 


SCHELLING. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph yon Schelling was born in Leon- 
berg, Wiirtenburg, January 27th, 1775. He first became acquaint¬ 
ed with Hegel at the Tubingen University. Their friendship 
was mutually advantageous and lasting. At Leipsic he studied 
Medicine and Philosophy, the latter under the tutorship of 
Fichte, whose vacant chair at Jena he afterwards filled, lectur¬ 
ing there with immense success. In 1795 he had published a 
treatise “On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy,” and 
another “On the Ego as the Principle of Philosophy.” At 
Jena, where he associated with Fichte and Hegel, he produced, 
in rapid succession, “Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature,” “On 
the Soul of the World,” a “First Sketch of a System of the 
Philosophy of Nature,” and a “System of Transcendental Ide¬ 
alism.” 

In 1803 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Wtirs- 
burg. In 1807 he was made a member of the Munich Academy 
of Sciences, (of which he was subsequently appointed President,) 
and next year he became Secretary to the Academy of Arts at 
the same place. Here, honored, rewarded, and ennobled, and 
filling the Chair of Philosophy to the University for fifteen 
years, he remained until 1842, when the King of Prussia seduced 
him to Berlin. While at Munich, his celebrity as a lecturer 
attracted multitudes of students from home and abroad. And 
here, in Berlin, in the chair once held by Hegel, he opened a 
series of lectures, in which he exhibited the ripe fruits of a 
life’s meditation before an admiring and knowledge-hungry 
crowd of students from various countries of Europe. 

“ His appearance at Berlin was the signal for violent polem¬ 
ics. The Hegelians were all up in arms. Pamphlets, full of 
personalities and dialectics, were launched against Schelling, 
apparently without much effect. His foes at length grew weary 
of screaming; and lie continued quietly to lecture.” 

Among his works, besides those already mentioned, are 


SCHELLING. 


667 


“Bruno, or the Divine and Natural Principle of Things,’* 
“ Philosophy and Religion,” “ Philosophical Researches on the 
Essence of Human Liberty,” and “Oil the Relation of Art to 
Nature,” in which latter work he elaborated his theory of Art 
as the perfect union of the Real with the Ideal. He died in 
Switzerland, August 20th, 1854, with his intellectual vigor unim¬ 
paired, and the respect with which he continued to inspire all 
who knew him, undiminished. He left several sons and daugh¬ 
ters. His collected works were published in fourteen volumes, 
1856-61. 

Schelling is often styled the German Plato. Were we to call 
him the German Plotinus we should perhaps be nearer the 
truth. There is a great and evident similarity, in historical 
position, between the modern German speculations and those 
of the Alexandrian Schools. “ In both, the incapacity of Reason 
to solve the problems of Philosophy is openly proclaimed; in 
both, some higher faculty is called in to solve them. Plotinus 
called this faculty Ecstasy. Schelling called it the Intellectual 
Intuition. The ecstasy was not supposed to be a faculty pos¬ 
sessed by all men, and at all times; it was only possessed by 
the few, arid by them but sometimes. The Intellectual Intuition 
was not supposed to be a faculty common to all men; on the 
contrary, it was held as the endowment only of a few of the 
privileged; it was the faculty for philosophizing. 

Alas! Alas! how the same forms of error reappear in history! 
How the labors of so many centuries have utterly failed to 
advance the human mind one single step in this direction! 
Alexandria and Rome in the third century reproduced in Munich 
and Berlin in the nineteenth! Ancient and Modern Transcen¬ 
dentalism and Spiritualism almost exact counterparts! But 
courage, gentle reader! Wait a little longer, and we shall 
hail the Modern Scientific Method bravely coming to the rescue 
in Philosophy, as in everything else, and annihilating by ignor¬ 
ing all the vagaries of Theology, Mysticism and Metaphysics! 
Until then, “Omne ignotum pro magnifico ,” of course! But — 
“ Gredat Judaeus ApellaJ” 

A few words, and then a long last farewell to Schelling the 
Magnificent. For ready magnificent he was in subtlety, ardency, 
audacity, and a unique form of what may be termed philosoph- 


668 


SCHELLING. 


ical poesy. But being all this, he necessarily disregarded pre¬ 
cision, and stood in striking contradiction to Kant and Fichte, 
in the absence of logical forms. 

We have seen that Fichte’s Idealism was purely subjective. 
Schelling’s was as purely objective. According to the latter, 
“ Philosophy has two primary problems to solve. In the Tran - 
scendental Philosophy the problem is to construct Nature from 
Intelligence —the Object from the Subject. In the Philosophy of 
Nature the problem is to construct Intelligence from Nature — 
the Subject from the Object.” Both Fichte and Schelling assert 
that the Object is but the arrested activity of the Ego. In what 
then do they differ? —“In this: the Ego in Fichte’s system is 
a finite Ego —it is the human soul. The Ego in Schelling’s 
system is the Absolute — the Infinite—the All, which Spinoza 
calls Substance; and this Absolute manifests itself in two 
forms: in the form of the Ego and in the form of the Non-Ego 
— as Nature and as Mind.” 

If we divest Schelling’s speculations of their dialectical forms, 
we shall arrive at the following results: “Idealism is one-sided. 
Beside the Subject, there must exist an Object; the two arc 
identical in a third, which is the absolute. This Absolute is 
neither Ideal nor Beal — neither Mind nor Nature —but both. 
Th's Absolute is God. He is the All in All; the eternal source 
of all existence. He realizes himself under one form as an 
objectivity; and under a second form as a subjectivity. He 
became conscious of himself in Man: and this Man, under the 
highest form of existence, manifests Beason; and by this Reason 
God knows himself. Such are the conclusions to which Shell¬ 
ing’s philosophy leads us.” 

In view of all this, we cannot for a moment see the justice 
of the declarations, made by certain eminent Christian review¬ 
ers of Schelling, that his doctrines are those, or nearly those 
which may be said to form the philosophic basis of Christian¬ 
ity, and that he was destined to deliver Philosophy from the 
logic of Pantheism and lead her back to Christ! The fact is, 
these Be viewers are either consummately stupid or outrageously 
dishonest. But for all that, Schelling, as well as his three great 
compeers, “builded better than he knew” in the Temple of 
Philosophical Infidelity. 


HEGEL. 


669 


HEGEL. 


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 
1770. At the age of eighteen he entered the University of Tubin¬ 
gen as student of theology. It was here that he formed an 
intimate acquaintance and friendship with Schelling, although 
the two friends became subsequently rival candidates for the 
leadership of German Philosophy. On leaving the University, 
he engaged as private teacher, first at Berne, and afterwards at 
Frankfort-on-the-Main. In 1801 he became a lecturer in the 
University of Jena. In the same year appeared his first 
important work, “On the Difference between the Philosophical 
Systems of Fichte and Schelling.” In 1805 he became professor- 
extraordinary of philosophy at Jena; but that town having 
soon after been taken by the French, he was thrown out of 
employment. For some time he edited a political paper at 
Bamberg. Here, in 1807, was published his “ Phenomenology,” 
the first part of his “System of Knowledge.” In 1808, he was 
appointed rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg, where he 
finished his “Science of Logic.” In 1811 he married Marie von 
Tucher, a lady of strong religious convictions and rare moral 
virtues. He was devotedly attached to her, and their union 
was eminently a happy one. He was called in 1816 to the chair 
of philosophy at Heidelberg, and while here published his 
“Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” in which his 
whole scheme of philosophy is comprised. In 1818 he succeeded 
at Berlin to the professorship of philosophy, left vacant by the 
death of Fichte. He died of cholera in 1831. Soon after his 
death his works were collected and published at Berlin, in 
eighteen volumes. 

It should not be forgotten that while at Jena, Hegel pub¬ 
lished a dissertation “On the Orbits of the Planets,” directed 
against the Newtonian system of astronomy. It was an appli¬ 
cation of Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature, and in it Newton 
was treated with, that scorn which Hegel never failed to heap 


HEGEL. 


6™ 

upon empirics , i. e ., those who trusted more to experience than 
to logic! 

At Jena he enjoyed the society of Goethe and Schiller, where 
the three may be said to have formed a very pleasant little 
society of mutual admiration. And it was here he finished 
writing his “ Phenomenology ” on the very night of the ever- 
memorable battle which has gone down to history by the name 
of that city. “While the artillery was roaring under the walls, 
the philosopher was deep in his work, unconscious of all that 
was going on. He continued writing, as Archimedes at the 
siege of Syracuse continued his scientific researches. The next 
morning, manuscript in hand, he steps into the streets, pro¬ 
ceeding to the publisher’s, firmly convinced that the interests 
of mankind are bound up with that mass of writing which he 
hugs so tenderly. The course of liis reverie is somewhat vio¬ 
lently interrupted; bearded and gesticulating French soldiers 
arrest the philosopher, and significantly enough inform him 
that, for the present, the interests of men lie elsewhere than in 
manuscripts. In spite of French soldiers, however, the work in 
due time saw the light, and w'as welcomed by the philosophical 
world as a new system — or rather as a new modification of 
Schelling’s system.” 

How far did he modify S; helling’s “unsystematic system?” 
The position he was to occupy became very clear. Either he 
must destroy Schelling’s ideas and bring forward others; or he 
must accept them, and in accepting, systematize them. Difficult 
as it was, he chose the latter task. His glory is nothing less 
than the invention of a new Method; and the invention of a 
Method has always been considered the very greatest effort of 
philosophical genius. “A method is a path of transit. Whoso 
discovers a path wherein mankind may travel in quest of truth, 
has done more towards the discovery of truth than thousands 
of men merely speculating. What had the observation and 
speculation of centuries done for Astronomy before the right 
path was found ?” 

This is not the place, even if we had the time, to describe 
and cfecus? Hegel’s method. But what did it lead to? It led 
to the bold assertion of the absolute identity of Subject and 
Object, of Mind and Matter, of Thought and Thing, of Real 


HEGEL. 


671 


and Ideal, of Being and Non-Being, of Something and Nothing, 
of Force and Impotence, of Light and Darkness, of Dictum and 
Contradiction! He declared that the true Philosophy was Abso¬ 
lute Idealism! That Absolute Idealism may be thus illustrated • 
“I see a tree. Psychologists tell me that there are three things 
implied in this one fact of vision, viz., a tree, an image of that 
tree, and a mind which apprehends that image. Fichte tells 
me that it is I alone who exist; the tree and the image of the 
tree are but one thing, and that is a modification of my mind. 
This is Subjective Idealism. Schelling tells me that both the 
tree a:.d my Ego are existences equally real or ideal, but they 
are nothing less than manifestations of the Absolute. This is 
Objective Idealism. But, according to Hegel, all these explana¬ 
tions are false. The only thing really existing (in this one fact 
of Vision) is the Idea—the relation , The Ego and the Tree are 
but two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This 
is Absolute Idealism. — Of the three forms of Idealism, this is 
surely the most preposterous; and that any sane man — not to 
speak of a man so eminent as Kegel —should for an instant 
believe in the correctness of the logic which * brought him to 
this pass’—that he should not at once reject the premises 
from which such conclusions followed—must ever remain a 
wonder to all sober thinkers — must ever remain a striking 
illustration of the unbounded confidence in bad logic which 
distinguishes metaphysicians — truly, ‘a race mad with logic, 
and feeding the mind with chimeras.’” 

The philosophy of Hegel is regarded by his followers as by 
far the most logical, complete, and comprehensive of all the 
pantheistic systems. It is generally regarded as the completion 
of the great philosophic edifice which Kant founded and to 
Which Fichte and Schelling contributed important materials. 

As to the relation which Hegel’s philosophy bears to Chris¬ 
tianity, Dr. Hedge says “the theological and phil sophical 
controversies of the day rage around it. It is reputed 1o be the 
most comprehensive and analytic of pantheistic schemes. Its 
author and some of his disciples have asserted that it is the 
same system, in the form of philosophy, which Christianity 
gives us in the form of faith. But its present position is that 
of hostility to Christianity.” 


672 


ROBERT OWEN. 


ROBERT OWEN. 


This man, who has exercised such a remarkable influence in 
this century, an influence that will grow as mankind becomes 
wiser and better through all the centuries to come, was a native 
of Newtown, in Montgomeryshire, Wales, where he was born in 
1771. Though his parents were quite poor, they enabled him to 
acquire such an education as was afforded by the school of his 
native town. 

He must have been an extraordinary child, for we learn from 
his own account of himself that he acted as teacher in this 
school at the age of seven years. At nine he was under-mas¬ 
ter. He left the school at the age of ten. The precocious and 
enterprising youth afterwards maintained himself for a few 
years as a shopman, being treated with uncommon considera¬ 
tion and liberality by his patrons. 

At this time Arkwright’s machinery was coming into use; 
and at the age of eighteen, Robert became a partner in a cotton- 
mill where forty men were employed. He was prosperous, and, 
the architect of his own fortunes, he rose from one lucrative 
position to another, until he became co-proprietor along with 
his wife’s father of the “New Lanark Twist Company’s ” works 
near Glasgow. He there presided over four thousand operatives 
in his employ with a sort of patriarchal care and benevolence, 
building new schools and dwellings, and generally exhibiting a 
great interest in the welfare of all connected with him. The 
New Lanark establishment included a farm of one hundred 
and fifty acres, and supported tw T o thousand inhabitants. 
Robert Owen was a consummate business man, making many 
fortunes himself, and enabling others to make them. If he had 
been selfish and worldly he might have died a prodigious 
landed proprietor and one of the wealthiest of cotton lords. 

His ability in the conduct and economy of this association 
was truly wonderful. His arrangements for the health, the 
diet and comfort of a multitude; his management of the mill 


ROBERT OWEN. 


673 


and the farm, the school and the ball-room of his successive 
establishments in Scotland, England, and America, proved his 
rare economic and administrative faculties. The Lanark mills 
were set up in 1784 by Arkwright, when Owen was a boy. Ten 
years after he became the manager of them, and while all the 
world was expecting his ruin from his new-fangled scheme, he 
bought out his jmrtner for eighty-four thousand pounds. Dur¬ 
ing the next four years he and his new partners realized more 
than one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He finally 
bought out his partners for one hundred and fourteen thousand 
pounds. 

He was thus at liberty to try his own methods with liis work¬ 
people, and so striking was his social and educational success, 
that the great ones of the earth came to learn his system. Kings 
and emperors went to Lanark, or invited Owen to their courts. 
In spite of liis notorious infidelity, statesmen, prelates and 
clergymen, dissenters, and bigots, came to inspect his schools. 
Territories were freely offered him in various parts of the 
world, in which to try his scheme on a large scale. The great 
Metternich held a succession of interviews with him with a 
view of establishing his system of society in Austria, employing 
many government clerks in registering conversations and copy¬ 
ing documents. He was brought into terms of intimacy with 
all the European celebrities of his time. 

In 1823 he came to the United States, where he purchased a 
large tract of land in Indiana, on the banks of the Wabash, 
and founded a community called by him New Harmony, where 
he carried the co-operative theory into effect. He created a 
furor for social amelioration all over the country, electrifying 
Conventions and Legislative Assemblies with his powerful 
arguments and personal influence. 

On the Fourth of July, 1826, exactly half a century previous 
to the day of our writing, Mr. Owen delivered his celebrated 
Declaration of Mental Independence , the radical character of 
which may be .learnt from the following extract: — 

“ I now declare to you [at New Harmony] and to the World, 
that Man, up to this hour, has been in all parts of the Earth a 
slave to a Trinity of the most monstrous evils that could be 
combined to inflict mental and physical evil upon his whole 


674 


ROBERT OWEN. 


race. I refer to Private or Individual Property, Absurd and 
Irrational Systems of Eeligion, and Marriage founded on Indi¬ 
vidual Property, combined with some of these Irrational Sys¬ 
tems of Eeligion.” 

Among his several other claims to the gratitude of the Eace, 
let us not forget that he was most certainly the father of the 
infant school system, and also started the reform-schools and 
houses of refuge, which have so amply proven themselves to be 
reformatory institutions of great beneficence. 

He returned to England in 1827, and established a commu¬ 
nity in the parish of Bathwell. In 1828-9 he was again in this 
country, preaching his gospel among the people, arguing with 
“Eev.” Alexander Campbell, treating with the Mexican govern¬ 
ment for a vast territory on which to develop Communism, 
establishing intimate relations with Martin Van Buren, then 
Secretary of State, and having important interviews with Andrew 
Jackson, the President, laboring with these dignitaries on behalf 
of national friendship and his new social system. New Har¬ 
mony, Yellow Springs, Nashoba, “Cooperative,” Franklin, 
Blue Springs, Forestville, Haverstraw, Coxsackie, and Kendall, 
were communities gotten up on his plan. They grew, flourished 
a while, but alas! decayed and died while in their teens. After 
expending a large fortune in the promotion of his benevolent but 
unsuccessful social establishments, he died in 1858. The follow¬ 
ing account of his death was published from the pen of Mr. 
Holyoake in “ The Eeasoner ” of December 5, 1858—: 

“ A National Association for the Advancement of Social Sci¬ 
ence stirred the pulses of the venerable propagandist. It -was 
the child of his own genius and labors. At the end of his jour¬ 
ney to Liverpool he had to take to his bed. On the day of the 
meeting —the last public meeting at which he was destined to 
appear —he ordered Mr. Eugby to dress him., His feebleness was 
such that the operation took two hours. He was then placed in 
a sedan chair, and carried to the hall. Four policemen bore 
him to the platform. It is now a matter of public history how 
kindly Lord Brougham, as soon as he saw his old friend, took 
him by the arm, led him forward, and obtained a hearing for 
-him. Then Mr. Owen, in his grand manner, proclaimed his 
ancient message of science, competence, and goodwill to the 


ROBERT OWEN. 


675 


world. "When he came to the conclusion of his first period, 
Lord Brougham, out of regard to his failing strength, termina¬ 
ted it. He clapped his hands, applauded his words, then said 
‘Capital, very good, can’t be better, Mr. Owen! There, that will 1 ' 
do.’ Then in an undertone, ‘Here, Rigby, convey the old gen¬ 
tleman to his bed.’ He was carried back. As soon as he 
reached his bed he became unconscious. That scene on the 
Liverpool platform will not soon die out of recollection. Lord 
Brougham and Mr. Owen, the two marvelous men who stood 
there was a sight not soon to be beheld again. Lord Brougham’s 
vivacity at eighty was as wonderful as Mr. Owen’s undying ardor 
at eighty-nine. For two weeks he kept his bed at the Victoria 
Hotel. One morning he exclaimed: — 

‘Rigby, pack up, we’ll go.’ 

‘ Go where, Sir? To London?’ 

‘ Go to my native place — I w T ill lay my bones whence I 
derived them.’ 

“ Dressings, delays, and carryings brought him to the Mersey. 
He was conveyed over. He took the rail to Shrewsbury. Thence 
a carriage to travel thirty miles into Wales. When he came to 
the border line which separates England from Wales, he knew 
it again. It was more than seventy years since he had passed 
over it. He raised himself up in his carriage and gave a cheer. 
He was in his ow T n native land once more. It was the last 
cheer the old man ever gave. With brightened eyes the aged 
w T anderer looked around. The old mountains stood there in 
their ancient grandeur. The grand old trees under whose 
shadow he passed in his youth waved their branches in wel¬ 
come. What scenes had the wanderer passed through since 
last he gazed upon them! Manufacturing days, crowning suc¬ 
cess, philanthropic experiments, continental travel, interviews 
with kings, Mississippi valleys, Indiana forests, journeys, labors, 
agitations, honors, calumnies, hope and toil —never resting; 
what a world, What an age, had intervened since last he passed 
his nalive border! He took up his residence at the Bear’s Head 
Hotel, in Newtowm, the place of his birth. During a week ho 
only took sugar and water. Mr. Owen, though never an 
abstainer from wine, was most temperate in his habits; and 
though most essential to him in his exhausted state, declined to 


676 


ROBERT OWEN. 


take stimulants now. Climatic disease is the explanation Dr. 

Slyman gave me of the immediate cause of his death. 

It was about seven in the morning, as his son held his hand, 
and a friend stood near him, that he said, ‘Belief has come — 
I am easy and comfortable,’and he passed away. Death, which 
commonly beautifies the features, re-imprinted his perennial 
smile upon his face. His lips appeared as though parting to 
speak, and he slept the sleep of death like one whose life had 
been a victory.” 

The name of Bobert Owen should be dear to all Freethink¬ 
ers, and indeed to all lovers of humanity. He spent a long life 
and a great fortune in the pursuit of human improvement. 
Although the name and services of the once popular reformer 
are now scarcely known except to a small circle of old Social¬ 
ists, yet to Bobert Owen’s earnest and patient efforts to ame¬ 
liorate the social condition of the people may be clearly traced 
that widely-spread cooperation which has taken deep root in 
the north of England, and which bids fair to work a complete 
social revolution. He probably created a far greater desire 
amongst the rich to assist the poor, and amongst the poor to 
seek after their own social salvation, than was possible to any 
other man of his epoch. He propounded the utility of associa¬ 
tion instead of division, in all the departments of human 
industry. He declared his invincible hostility to every existing 
or pre-existent form of religious faith. He stigmatized every 
species of theology as a hindrance to human progress; because 
all of them operated as deterrents from freedom of thought, and 
promulgated the monstrous doctrine that man can control and 
determine his belief, and is therefore morally responsible for it 
to God. His protest against superstition and intolerance effect¬ 
ed incalculable good. That Freethinker is unworthy of the title 
who, when he hears the name of Bobert Owen mentioned, feels 
no stirring of reverence and love for the benevolent and noble 
old man who lived stainless in character and independent in 
mind, with his eye ever on the one aim of emancipating his 
fellow men from the tyranny of ignorance and error, and from 
the galling oppressions of social injustice. 


FOURIER. 


677 


FOURIER. 

Our notice of the founder of the famous socialist system of 
“Fourierism” must be brief. He was born at Besancon, in 
France, in 1772. He was the son of a merchant. After receiving 
his education in his native town, he was employed a few years 
in a counting-house in Lyons. In 1793, during the Revolution, 
he was compelled to take arms, and served in one or two cam¬ 
paigns on the Rhine. His leisure time while in the army, how¬ 
ever, was employed in study and reflection upon the social and 
political theories which then abounded in France. And after 
leaving the army, while employed in various other situations, 
his active mind was busily engaged on the same subjects. He 
also acquired proficiency in the exact sciences, not neglecting 
political economy He passed several years as a commercial 
traveler for mercantile houses of Marseilles and Lyons, dili¬ 
gently engaged in the problem whose solution should remedy 
the miseries of the present social system. 

In 1803 he published, in a Lyons journal, an article on 
European policy which attracted the favorable notice of Bona¬ 
parte. At length, having, as he thought, made the important 
discovery of which he was in search, he published, in 1808, his 
“Theory of Four Movements and General Destinies,” designed 
ss the prospectus of a more complete work, which appeared in 
1822, entitled a “Treatise on Domestic and Agricultural Associ¬ 
ation.” A late edition was entitled “Theory of Universal 
Unity,” (4 vols. 1841). These works were coldly received by the 
public and by the reviewers: but for all that, they have 
exerted great influence in the world, and at the present moment, 
in Europe and America, the doctrines of Fourier are sensibly 
felt even to the finger ends of bodies politic. Numerous exper¬ 
iments of his system of attractive industry and social harmony 
have been made in the Old and New Worlds. These experi¬ 
ments proved and achieved much, but the times did not seem 
to be ready for them, consequently they have not been sue- 


G78 


FOURIER. 


cessful, except when considerably modified, as in the case of 
the very successful Familistere, or “Social Palace” at Guise, 
France, projected and superintended by M. Godin, of which a 
fair, suggestive, and illustrated account may be seen in “ Har¬ 
per’s Monthly” for March, 18—, and which has been beautifully 
Americanized in that enticing novel “Papa’s Own Girl,” and 
by means of Kate Stanton’s grand lecture on “The Uncrowned 
Kings.” 

The following is a full and correct list of the “Fouriestic” 
Phalanxes, Phalanstenes, or Associations which appeared, from 
time to time, in the United States: — 

Fore-runners : — Brook Farms Community; Hopedale; The 
Northampton Association; The Skaneateles Community. 

Phalanxes Proper: —Sylvania; Peace Union; McKean County; 
One-Mentian; Social Reform ; Goose-Pond; Seraysville; Clark¬ 
son; Sodus Bay; Bloomfield; Ortan’s Union; Mixville; Jeffer¬ 
son County; Moorhouse Union; Marlboro; Prairie Home; Trum¬ 
bull; Ohio; Clermont; Integral; Alphadelphia; La Grange; 
Columbia; Spring Farm Bureau County; Washtenaw; Garden 
Grove; Iowa Pioneer; Wisconsin; North American; Brook Farm 
Phalanx. 

All these “Phalanxes,” after various good and ill fortunes, 
in time failed. “ Fourier himself would have utterly disowned 

every one of them.He vehementiy protested against 

an experiment in France, which had a cash basis of $100,000, 
and the advantage of his own possible presence and administra¬ 
tion. Much more would he have refused responsibility for the 
whole brood of unscientific and starveling ‘picnics,’ that fol¬ 
lowed Brisbane’s excitations. Here then arises a distinction 
between Fourierism as a theory propounded by Fourier, and 
Fourierism as a practical movement administered in this coun¬ 
try by Brisbane and Greeley. The constitution of a country is 
one thing; the government is another. Fourier furnished con¬ 
stitutional principle; Brisbane was the working President of the 
administration. We must not judge Fourier’s theory by Bris¬ 
bane’s execution.” 



MARY SOMERVILLE. 


679 


MARY SOMERVILLE. 


This eminent astronomer and scientific writer was born at 
Jedburgh, in Scotland, about 1780. She was instructed in the 
mathematical and physical sciences by her father, Sir William 
Jedburgh, an officer in the Royal Marrines. After becoming the 
wife of Dr. Somerville, she distinguished herself by making 
some experiments on the magnetic influence of the solar rays 
of the spectrum. But it was to Lord Brougham that her intro¬ 
duction to scientific literature was chiefly due. That enlight¬ 
ened nobleman engaged her to supply the “Society for the 
Diffusion of useful Knowledge ” with a popular summary of 
Laplace’s “Mecanique Celeste,” which appeared in 1832 under 
the title of “Mechanism of the Heavens.” She subsequently 
produced a treatise “On the Connection of the Physical Scien¬ 
ces,” and “Physical Geography.” Her services to literature 
and science were acknowledged by an honorary membership of 
the Royal Astronomical Society, and a pension of £300 per 
annum from the Civil List Fund. In her admirable works, 
such abstruse subjects as gravitation, the figure of the earth, 
the tides, heat, electricity, and comets were ably treated. 

This estimable lady had great confidence in the Universe and 
the unchangeable laws which control it, and but little in the 
dicta of priests and the dogmas of superstition. It was easy for 
her to comprehend the reality, the permanence, and the eter- 
nality of matter and its forces; of the revelations which Nature 
makes in the starry worlds and their ceaseless motions; in the 
rock strata of our earth; of the formation of soils from these; 
of the almost endless gradation of vegetable and animal life 
from the minutest green mould of cheese to the tallest mon¬ 
arch of the forest, and from the microscopic infusoria , hun¬ 
dreds of which sport in a drop of water, to the whales that 
people the Arctic seas, and the elephants and mammoths that 
have trod the earth’s surface, but she could comprehend but 
little of the myths and absurdities which priests and monks 
spend their lives in promulgating. 


680 


GODFREY HIGGINS, 


GODFREY HIGGINS. 


All along the past ages great and gifted souls, emerging from 
comparative obscurity, have, by force of inherited instincts, 
quickened energies, and heroic life purposes, left behind them 
records that must necessarily be as enduring as the races and 
countries that their lives honored. The man of will — the man 
that does is King. Most of us are ardent admirers of all such 
brave men as dare to investigate — to speak — to write — to 
defend their honest convictions of truth. Such a man was God¬ 
frey Higgins. 

Rocky, mountainous regions, in all latitudes, tend to freedom 
and intellectual development. Accordingly, if Greece gave the 
world a Socrates, and Sweden a Swedenborg, rough, uneven 
Yorkshire, England, has produced many noble sterling charac¬ 
ters, and among them the subject of this sketch. 

Godfrey Higgins was born in 1770, at Skellow Grange, a 
quiet country seat, in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England. He was 
an only son. The father, a pleasant gentleman of independent 
fortune, sent him Erst to the common school, and afterwards 
to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Upon his father’s death, which 
happened when Godfrey was about twenty-seven years of age, 
he inherited the house and the estate at Skellow Grange. 
Shortly after this he married, continuing a home-life till the 
threatened invasion of Napoleon, when he entered the Third 
West-York Militia, becoming in due time a Major. While in 
military life his heaith became impaired to such a degree that 
he never fully recovered. Resigning his commission and re¬ 
turning to Skellow Grange, he devoted considerable time to 
reform movements, connected with the York Lunatic Asylum, 
pauper institutions, and other philanthropic work. At this time 
he was a member of the English Church. But naturally re* 
flective, incredulous, and progressive, the cold, dismal forms-- 
the irrational dogmas of the Church afforded food for neither his 
affectional nor intellectual nature. He became skeptical. The 


GODFREY IIIGGINS. 


681 


clergy failing to meet his arguments, denounced him as an 
Infidel. This inclined him to turn his whole attention to the 
study of antiquity and evidences relating to the origin of nations, 
languages and religions. The subject was almost boundless, 
and to it he devoted ten hours a day for almost twenty years. 
The results of this severe application appeared in three mas¬ 
sive volumes, the “ Anacalypsis ”— the “Celtic Druids ” — the 
“ Horae Sabbaticae” —the “Life of Mahomet ”— and sundry pam¬ 
phlets for private distribution. Long an invalid, he died in 1863. 

“ Before the Aryan and the Semitic races had made a record 
in history, aboriginal peoples occupied India, Arabia, and the 
countries of the Mediterranean. They were not barbarous, for 
their monumental remains show that their knowledge of archi¬ 
tecture, the mechanic arts, and perhaps astronomy, has not been 
excelled in subsequent times. Their civilization, however, was 
peculiar: for the religious comprehended the political system, 
and worship made science and art its ministers. Unconscious 
of harm or immodesty, they adored the Supreme Being as the 
Essential Principle of Life; and expressed their veneration by 
symbols which, in their simple apprehension, best expressed 
the Divine Functions. The Sun, possessing and diffusing the 
triune potencies of Heat, Light, and Actinism, was a universal 
emblem of God; as was the Bull, the zodiacal sign which indi¬ 
cated the vernal equinox and the resuscitation of Time. With 
equal aptness and propriety the human organs of sex, as repre¬ 
senting Divine Love and the Perpetuation of Animated Exist¬ 
ence, were also adopted as symbols of the Deity, and models of 
them employed at all religious festivals. Those symbols were 
adopted by tlie Aryan conquerors of India, and inc ^rporated 
into the Brahmin worship; and we fmd remains of the pre- 
historical religion in modern creeds, superstitions, and archi¬ 
tecture. The Monumental Shaft, the Cross, the Cliurch-spire, 
appear to have been derived from the archaic worship just noted, 
and mean alike the virile symbol and the life everlasting.” 
This olden and apparently universal religion Mr. Higgins lucidly 
explicated in the works first above mentioned. And what a 
mine it was for such a patient and conscientious delver as he! 

In 1869 an American admirer, J. M. Peebles, visited Skellow 
Grange, and was most cordially received by the niece of this 


682 


GODFREY HIGGINS. 


distinguished man. The mansion, antique in structure, looked 
old and weather-worn. A crystal brook rippled musically by 
the lawn. The hours he spent in that choicely-selected library, 
remaining nearly as the erudite occupant left it; the unpub¬ 
lished manuscripts and correspondence that he was x^ermitted to 
examine; and the liberal amount of documents put into hie 
possession by this lady-relative of Mr. Higgins, are treasured 
as among the sunniest memories of his life. 

The family being English churchmen, did not sympathize in 
the least with his radical views touching the natural origin of 
all religions, while priests, even to the clergyman of Burgwallis, 
shamefully persecuted him. 

Writing of himself, (preface to “ Anacalypsis,” p. 8) Mr. Hig¬ 
gins says, “The benefit which I derived from the examination 
of the works of the ancients in my two journeys to Home, and 
one to Naples, produced a wish to examine the antiquity of 
more oriental climes. ... I am now turned sixty; the eye 
grows dim, and yet, if the strictest attention to diet and habits 
may be expected to prolong health, I may not be unreasonable 
in looking forward for several years to continue my work, in 
the expectation of making great discoveries.” 

While this learned man loathed superstition, despised theo¬ 
logical creeds, and abhorred the overbearing priestcraft of his 
age, he believed in God, and spoke in the most reverent man¬ 
ner of Jesus of Nazareth. Listen again,— “A writer in the 
‘Bishop’s Keview’ accuses me,” says Mr. Higgins, “of being 
in a rage with the priests. I flatter myself I am never in a 
rage with anything: but I shall never scruple to express my 
detestation of an order which exists directly in opposition to 
the commands of Jesus Christ. Priesthoods and priests were 
called by Jesus ‘vipers’ and ‘hypocrites’ that loved to pray 
standing in the corner of the streets.” “Jesus Christ was put 
to death, if the four gospel histories can be believed, merely for 
teaching what I have no doubt he did teach, that temples, 
priests, mysteries and cabala were all unnecessary. His moral 
teachings were so plain that they might be called the poor 
man’s religion.” 

Only two hundred copies of this wonderful book were pub¬ 
lished. Mr. Higgins himself says, in the Preface,—“I have 


GODFREY HIGGINS. 


683 


printed only two hundred copies of this work; of these two 
hundred only a few got at first into circulation. The tendency 
of the work is to overturn all the established systems of relig¬ 
ion, to destroy several notions upon subjects generally consid¬ 
ered sacred, and to substitute a simple unsacerdotal worship. 
Names hitherto looked upon with veneration by the world are 
stripped of their honors, and others are lifted from oi>probrium 
to a position of reverence.” These two large volumes, so rich in 
the literature of the East, inspired thought, puzzled reviewers, 
and silenced priests. For its time — half a century since — the 
“ Anacalypsis,” though lacking careful, logical analysis, was suf¬ 
ficiently vigorous and scholarly to immortalize the name of 
Godfrey Higgins. And yet, as no scientist would think of 
quoting as authority a book upon chemistry written fifty years 
since, so no scholar in the light of modern discoveries and 
persistent explorations in the lands of Brahminism and Budd¬ 
hism would think of referring to the “ Anacalypsis ” as final 
authority. Such errors as the following are samples: — “Jesus, 
the founder of the golden rule.” “The old synagogue Hebrews 
is the oldest wTitten language.” But Max Muller, who, as a 
linguist, lias no peer, pronounces the Sanskrit a much older 
language than the Hebrew. And Leibnitz, the contemporary of 
Newton, says: — “There is as much reason for supposing He¬ 
brew to have been the primitive and oldest written language of 
mankind, as there is for adojiting the view of Goropius, that 
the Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.” The excel¬ 
lencies of the “Anacalypsis” so far excel the defects, however, 
that it may be considered a very sun in the theological sky of 
the past. 

And indeed, as to the comparative antiquity of the Sanskrit 
itself, it should not be forgotten that once upon a time there 
existed a superficial school which maintained that the Sanskrit 
was never a spoken, living language, but only an esoteric book- 
language prepared expressly for the priests and priest-philoso¬ 
phers a little before or about the commencement of the so-called 
Christian era. One story is that some learned Brahmins about 
that time were traveling in Greece and Rome, and noticing the 
convenient, sonorous, and beautiful inflexions of the Greek and 
Roman languages, which they so much lacked in their native 


G84 


GODFREY HIGGINS. 


tongue, betook themselves to create a much more highly differ¬ 
entiated and beautiful language still, for the use of their class in 
subtle dialectics and expressions of abstract thought. And to 
this intent, it is said, they not only often very closely imitated 
the inflections of Greek and Latin, but actually rifled their very 
root-words, to a large degree, for the elementary basis of the 
new tongue. In opposition to this theory, as before observed, 
Max Muller and other learned philologists firmly believe the 
Sanskrit to not only have been a living spoken language, thou¬ 
sands of years ago, but also to have afforded the groundwork 
for the Greek, the Latin and other more modern languages. 

Lady D. Morgan, wife of the late Prof. D. Morgan London, 
and the personal friend of Mr. Higgins while in college and 
afterwards, assures us that he was ambitious as a youth, and 
strictly upright and conscientious as a man; that he was a 
magistrate in West Biding; that he belonged to the Masonic 
fraternity: that he was a member of the Loyal Asiatic Society; 
a sincere admirer of Bichard Carlile; a frequent guest of the 
learned Duke of Sussex, brother of King George IV., and was 
present at the unrolling of the first mummy ever brought from 
Egypt to England. 

The English impression of Godfrey Higgins, in spite of the 
calumny of anxious competitors and priestly enemies, was, and 
is, that he was an original thinker, a diligent student, and an 
honest, non-time serving, free-spoken man. He had, in fact, 
the sterling bravery of a martyr, the energy of an iconoclast, 
and the self-denial of a moral hero. Truth was the great 
object of his search, and freedom the key-word to his nature. 
To interpret the characteristics of this man by his books is to 
admire and love him for his works’ sake. 

A new edition of “ Anaealypsis,” in four volumes, is now 
being published in London. The reader will do well to thor¬ 
oughly s' r.dy it, as well as the related works of Knight, Inman, 
Westrop, Wake, and others of this class, if he wants to get a 
clear view of the purely human origin of our highly-vaunted 
Divine Christianity. 


✓ 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


685 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 

This “Modern Apostate” and “Devil’s Chaplain,” was born 
at Edmonton, County of Middlesex, England, August 18th, 1784. 
His family was in affluent circumstances, and highly respect¬ 
able. But for all that, Robert, being a younger son in a family 
of eleven children, had to be trained up to follow some profes¬ 
sion. His father dying when he was about seven, years old, he 
was left under the guardianship of a paternal uncle. In his 
seventeenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Birming¬ 
ham, and afterwards studied medicine under Sir Astley Cooper, 
and passed with honors the College of Surgeons. 

About the year 1807 he became acquainted with the Rev. 
Thomas Cotterell, a clergyman of the Established Church of 
England, of high evangelical principles, who induced him to 
quit physics for metaphysics, and in 1809 he entered St. John’s 
College, Cambridge, and in 1813 took his B.A. degree. He had 
proved himself an excellent scholar, and was publicly compli¬ 
mented by the Master of the College as a singular honor to the 
University. On March 14th, 1813, he was ordained by the Bishop 
of Chichester, and from that time until 1818 officiated as Curate 
at Mid hurst. 

It was while quietly following his ecclesiastical duties at this 
place, that he became acquainted with a person named Ayling, 
who held Deistical opinions, and who induced him to read cer¬ 
tain Freethinking books. The result was that Mr. Taylor ulti¬ 
mately avowed himself a Deist, and resigned his cure. This 
occasioned great anxiety and alarm among his family and 
friends, who brought all the pressure they could to bear upon 
him, in order to have him recant, and we regret to have to 
state it, with only too much success! But after the temporary 
recantation, his friends, who procured it, nearly abandoned him 
to his fate. It was not him, but the holy Church, they cared 
for; and as long as that seemed to have been vindicated and 
proved victor, Taylor might as well be shaken off as a sting- 
drawn and harmless viper! Consequently he soon found him- 


686 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


self in distress, and shunned even by his family. But the kind¬ 
ness of an old friend obtained him the curacy of Yardley, near 
Birmingham. His previous apostacy, however, having reached 
the ears of the Bishop, he was not allowed the necessary 
license, and the rector who had engaged him was peremptorily 
ordered to dismiss him. Such harsh treatment as this would 
naturally produce a reaction of strong feeling in the breast of 
such a man as Taylor; and this feeling was not long in pro¬ 
ducing bitter fruit. While his rector was on a journey of dis¬ 
covery, seeking another curate, Taylor preached a series of 
sermons, by means of which lie shook the faith of nearly the 
whole of his congregation. An abstract of his last sermon at 
Yardley is here appended: — 

“The text was, ‘For as Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the son of man be three 
days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’ Matthew xii. 
40. He began, ‘Then this glorious miracle of the man having 
been swallowed alive by a fish, and remaining alive for seventy- 
two hours, undigested and unhurt, in the fish’s bowels, and 
being vomited up unhurt and safe upon the dry land, was as 
true as the gospel; and consequently the gospel was as true, 
but not more true, than this sea-sick miracle. He inferred that 
no person could have a right to pretend to believe in the 
death and resurrection of Christ, who had the least doubt as to 
the reality of the deglutition and evomition of the prophet 
Jonah. As to the natural improbabilities and physical impossi¬ 
bilities of this very wonderful Bible miracle, they were noth¬ 
ing in the -way of a true and lively faith. Where miracles of 
any sort were concerned, there could be no distinction into the 
greater and the less, since infinite power was as necessary to 
the reality of the least as to the greatest. We should never 
forget it that it was the Lord who prepared the fish, and pre¬ 
pared him for the express piftpose of swallowing the man, and 
probably gave him a little opening physic, to cleanse the apart¬ 
ment for the accommodation of its intended tenant; and had 
the purpose been, that the whole ship and all the crew should 
have been swallowed as well as he, there’s no doubt that they 
could have been equally well accommodated. But as to what 
some wicked Infidels objected, about the swallow of the whale 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


CS7 


being too narrow to admit the passage of the man, it only- 
required a little stretching, and even a herring or a sprat might 
have gulped him. Ho enlarged, most copiously, on the circum¬ 
stance of the Lord speaking to the fish, in order to cause him 
to vomit; and insisted on the natural efficacy of the Lord, 
which was quite enough to make anybody sick. He pointed 
out the many interesting examples of faith and obedience which 
had been set by the scaly race, who were not only at all times 
easy to be caught in the gospel net, when thrown over them by 
the preaching of the Word, but were always ready to surrender 
their existence to the Almighty, whenever he pleased to drop 
’em a line. That as the first preachers of the gospel were fish¬ 
ermen, so the preachers of the go pel, to this day, might truly 
be said to be looking after the loaves and fishes, and they who, 
as the Scripture says, are ‘wise to catch soles,’ speak to them 
for no other purpose than that for which the Lord spoke unto 
the whale — that is, to ascertain how much they can swallow.” 
The moral of this pungent persiflage, aimed to admonish the 
proud and uncharitable believer, who expected his acceptance 
with the deity on the score of his credulity, that when his cre¬ 
dulity was fairly put to trial, it might be found he was in real¬ 
ity as far from believing what he did not take to be true as the 
most honest and avowed Infidel. ‘Thou then who wouldst put 
a trick upon infinite wisdom, and preferrest the imagined merit 
of a weak understanding to the real utility of an honest heart— 
those who wouldst 

‘ Compound for sins thou art inclined to, 

By damning those thou hast no mind to,’ 

hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self? Thou believest 
only that which seemeth to thee to be true; what does the 
Atheist less? And that which appeareth to be a lie, thou reject- 
eth; what does the Atheist more ? Can we think that God has 
given us reason only to betray us, and made us so much supe¬ 
rior to the brute creation, only to deal with us so much worse 
than they, to punish us for making the best use we could of 
the faculties he has given us, and to make the very excellence 
of our nature the cause of our damnation ?’ ” 

Carlile made a tour through England on an Infidel mission, 


688 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


commencing with a challenge to Cambridge University, visiting 
this and the other Universities, and the large towns and cities 
of England, and everywhere challenging the clergy to meet 
them in argument. A few debates took place, but everywhere 
an excitement was created and the tourists were triumphant. 
On Mr. Taylor’s return from this tour the “Rotunda,” near 
Blackl'riar’s Bridge, London, (previously used as a low theatre) 
was oj^ened with tremendous effect. A second prosecution fol¬ 
lowed, and on July 4, 1831, he was again tried for blasphemy, 
and sentenced to two years imprisonment in Horsemongers’ 
jail, where his treatment was as cruel as an English Govern¬ 
ment and faction dared make it. Mr. Taylor, in a fit of desper¬ 
ation from ill-usage, having threatened the life of the jailer, 
this fact was made use of even by the government for prolong¬ 
ing his imprisonment. During this prosecution the Society at 
the Rotunda was partly broken up. He had been the friend 
and companion of Richard Carlile for several years, but soon 
after his release from Horsemongers’ a want of unanimity 
between them injured his exertions. His public career was 
terminated by a marriage with an intellectual lady of some 
property, who had long been his admirer, and, we are told, 
paid some of the fines with which he was oppressively mulcted. 
With his wife he retired to France, and there spent in tran¬ 
quillity the remainder of his days, and died a few years after 
at a good old age. 

It is difficult to quote from Robert Taylor’s works without 
doing him great injustice. The reader is therefore referred to 
his works, the full titles of which are as follows:— “The 
Diegesis; being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and 
Early History of Christianity, never yet before or elsewhere so 
fully and faithfully set forth. By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. 
B., and M. R. C. S. [Member of the Royal College of Surg¬ 
eons].”—“Syntagma of the Evidences of the Christian Religion, 
being a Vindication of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence 
Society, against the assaults of The Christian Instruction Soci¬ 
ety. By Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B., and M. R. C. S., Orator of 
the Areopagus, Prisoner in Oakham Jail for the conscientious 
maintenance of the Truths contained in that Manifesto.” — 

His connection with the Church of England was thus con- 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


689 


eluded. His brother agreed to make him an allowance of £1 
(one pound) per week if he would quit England. He retired to 
the Isle of Man. But after nine weeks his brother ceased to 
remit; and to support himself, Mr. Taylor had to have recourse 
to writing for the press. His articles in the two newspapers 
then published in the island attracting attention, he was sum¬ 
moned before the bishop, and compelled to quit the island 
under a threat of imprisonment. In deep distress he went to 
Dublin, where he joined some gentlemen in forming a “Society 
of Universal Benevolence” in a small theatre, of which he 
became lecturer. But even from here he was driven by Pro¬ 
testant bigotry. 

In 1824 he arrived in London, lectured and debated in vari¬ 
ous places, and founded “The Christian Evidence Society.” 
Many of the discourses delivered by him were printed in the 
“Lion,” which was first published in 1828 by Richard Carlile. 
Others form the volume known as “The Devil’s Pulpit,” a 
name given from the circumstance of the author having been 
dubbed the “ Devil’s Chaplain ” by Mr. H. Hunt. In 1827, the 
Mayor of London, presumed to be instigated by others, had 
Mr. Taylor arrested for blasphemy, selecting the matter from 
the “Devil’s Pulpit.” This was done in the meanest possible 
way, the arrest being made so late on a Saturday night as to 
prevent bail being obtained, and thereby the man of power 
gained the petty advantage of disappointing the public by 
preventing Mr. Taylor’s lecture on Sunday. A prosecution was 
now organized. Wright, a Bristol Quaker and banker took this 
opportunity to press a debt, and threw the orator into prison. 
During the same year a second indictment was preferred, 
including several of Mr. Taylor’s friends, but they were never 
brought to trial. On October 24, 1827, he was tried at Guildhall 
for blasphemy, convicted by a “Church and King” Jury, and 
sentenced to imprisonment for one year, in Oakham jail, with 
securities for good behavior for five years. In Oakham he 
wrote his “Diegesis” and “Syntagma,” and communicated a 
weekly letter to Carlile’s “Lion.” 

After his release from prison, in 1829, he formed an intimate 
acquaintance with Mr. Carlile, resumed his lectures, and with 
“The Devil’s Pulpit; or Astro-Theological Sermons, &c.,” and 


690 


ROBERT TAYLOR. 


“Tho Astronomico-Theological Lectures,” (second series of 
above). It may be here stated that Taylor never approved the 
title “Devil’s Pulpit” to the first series, which the London 
publisher has, nevertheless, affixed to all his lectures. He was 
for naming both series “Astronomico-Theological Lectures.” 

Mr. Taylor may have been a little too much given to sensa¬ 
tionalism, but for all that, he did a grand work in his time. Ho 
dared and devoted his life for us in a far higher sense than any 
Jesus ever did or could do; and therefore, for all his few 
foibles, Freethinkers will forever hold him in holy remem¬ 
brance. There may be some slight mistakes in his books, but 
considering where they were written, and taking into account 
the natural anxiety of his mind when penning most of them in 
jail, it is really wonderful to notice their general acumen and 
correctness. Indeed, in the Dedication of his “Diegesis” to 
the Masters, Fellows, and Tutors of St. John’s College, Cam¬ 
bridge, he says, “Your assistance for the perfecting of future 
editions, by animadversions on any errors which might have 
crept into the first, and the feeling with respect to it, which 
I cannot but anticipate, though it may never be expressed, will 
amply gratify an ambition whose undivided aim was to set 
forth truth, and nothing else but truth.” 

Prison bars and fine did not possess the power to terrify his 
soul nor to cause him to deny the honest convictions to which he 
gave his assent. Under the guardianship of the Church he had 
become thoroughly versed in the romance and the myths which 
make its system, and in the honesty of his nature he was com¬ 
pelled to discard and abjure them all and to embrace the real¬ 
ities of Nature and Eeason which fail not to clearly present 
themselves to the studious investigator. Having found what 
his judgment approved as truth he fearlessly made known to 
others, regardless of the consequences to himsejf that might 
grow out of that honest course. His name, we repeat, must 
ever be held in veneration by lovers of truth and the admirers 
of freethought and free speech. 


WILLIAM JOHNSON POX. 


691 


WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX. 

The subject of this memoir was born on the 1st of March, 
1786, near Wrentham, in Suffolk. His parents removed to 
Norwich when he was three years of age. At the age of twelve 
he was a weaver boy. He acknowledged this fact with pride 
when he signed several articles in a newspaper called The 
League, “A Norwich Weaver Boy.” He exchanged the loom 
and the shuttle for the banker’s desk and pen at the age of 
fourteen. It was then that he commenced the great work of 
self-education. The young student assiduously struggled up¬ 
ward from commerce, until, with little intermitting help, he 
acquired a tolerably extensive range of learning, including 
Latin, mathematics, and a little Greek. Adopting the ministry 
for his profession, he entered the seminary directed by Dr. 
Pye Smith, at Homerton; and at the proper time appeared in 
what he believed his true position as a teacher of the people. 
He began his duties as a preacher at Farnham, where he 
remained until 1812. He had been bred among the Calvanistic 
Independent; but having changed his opinions respecting the 
doctrine of the Trinity, he separated from the religious body 
among whom he had been bred, and became the pastor of a 
Unitarian congregation at Chichester. 

In 1817 he removed to London, where he became known to 
all the world as the lecturer of Finsbury Chapel, and became 
celebrated as the first pulpit orator of his time. Upon the 
prosecution of Bichard Carlile, in 1819, for the republication of 
Paine’s “Age of Beason,” he preached a sermon remarkable 
for a man who was still a strictly orthodox Unitarian. In his 
“Last Trial for Atheism in England,” Mr. Holyoake mentions 
that the only pulpit whence he received a word of sympathetic 
allusion for his imprisonment in 1842 was the pulpit occupied 
and distinguished by Mr. Fox. n- 

Fox not only preached to the Unitarians, but to a large 
congregation bound by no creed or formula at allj at the same 


692 


WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX. 


time he lent the aid of his pen to the Liberal party in politics. 
For many years he was accorded the post of honor at the great 
Free-Trade gatherings in Drury Lane and elsewhere, among 
such men as Cobden, Bright, Thompson, and O’Connell as his 
fellow-workers. He generally delivered the concluding address 
at these meetings, the audience always remaining to hear him. 

In 1847 he was elected to Parliament from Oldham. Mr. 
Holyoake, writing in 1855, says: “Mr. Fox has admirably sus¬ 
tained the reputation of the people in Parliament, both by good 
taste and good sense. He has set an example which might 
redeem the House from Carlyle’s stigma, of being a ‘House of 
Palaver.’ With that inimitable tact with which he so often 
turned the flank of an enemy on the platform, and caught by 
intuition the temper of an audience, he has mastered the 
attention of the Commons — a most unusual achievement in one 
entering the House so late in life. There is one work which we 
ho-e will yet be given to the world—that is an edition of Mr. 
Fox’s Orations. They would stand side by side with Burke’s 
and Macaulay’s. They would not only enrich our literature, but 
advantage the political and oratorical student. 

“When we speak of Fox, we speak of one who has wedded 
art to the advocacy of liberty —one who has made the cause of 
freedom graceful as well as strong — who has advanced and 
extended the liberties of humanity. As a writer, and as a 
critic, especially as a dramatic critic, an art in which so few 
excel, Mr. Fox has achieved a reputation; but oratory is his 
strength. He speaks as a Garibaldi fights; daring is natural 
to him. It is in the presence of the people that the inspiration 
is in Mr. Fox. He has never thought so well as on the plat¬ 
form; there he is the wit, the poet, the man of genius, as well 
as the orator. It is his element to move the people—there is 
no inheritance of genius so glorious as this. His name makes 
the fortune of a placard calling a meeting. You listen to Lord 
John Bussell — he is so ‘constitutional;’ you hear Cobden — he 
is so full of his subject; you hear Bright — he shakes the enemy 
with his teeth; but a speech by Fox is a work of art.” 

During the interval between 1845 and 1849 were issued his 
“Lectures addressed to the Working Classes.” Mr. Holyoake 
thus characterized them in the “People’s Press:” “Some of 


WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX. 


693 


these lectures are upon eminent men in science, such as Coper¬ 
nicus and AVatt, others upon living poets, in which the iron 
strength of Ebenezer Elliott, the lark-like songs of Tennyson, 
the satirical melodies of Moore —with their great associates in 
song, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Mrs. Norton, Joanna Baillie, 
pass over the stage in honor. Thomas Campbell, Poland’s 
ardent and intrepid poet, with other , are considered in refer¬ 
ence to their powers and claims, and the award made which 
their merit demands, and the people’s, gratitude dictates. 
Great questions, moral, philosophical, political, and ecclesias¬ 
tical — the reciprocal duties of electors and their representatives, 
and the lofty jdiilosophy of Death, are discussed with fullness, 
freedom, and power. These lectures, sixty in number, make 
three neat volumes. The study of the whole would make an 
attentive person a moralist, a politician, and a critic. 

“The reader is enchanted as he reads these ‘Lectures,’ but as 
iEscliines said of the orations of Demosthenes: — ‘What would 
you have thought had you heard him deliver them ? * Perfect in 
articulation and clear in tone, his words descend on the ear, 
not with the trumpet s tone or the torrent’s roar, but his tones 
break forth with the pure clang of a bell struck by a lady’s 
hammer. His perspicuity of style equals the clearness of his 
enunciation — the stream of meaning is transparent — the light 
of sense 

* Shines like stars in the sea, 

Where the blue waves roll nightly o’er deep Galilee.’" 

Fox died in 1864, His was the task to spread knowledge, to 
uproot error, and to destroy superstition. And while we do 
battle with the noxious evils of an worn-out religion to-day, let 
us gratefully remember the pioneers who went before, who 
toiled weary and footsore where we now travel so easily, who 
bore the firsc shattering brunt of Avar, and left for us the 
defeat of an already half-conquered foe. 

As a fair average specimen of the opinions and style of Mr. 
Fox, the following passage is presented from his “State Estab¬ 
lishment of Eeligion: — “ A priesthood has almost always been 
the enemy of public liberty. Philosophical historians trace the 
connection between different forms of religion and of govern- 


694 


WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX. 


ment, discriminating them by this very circumstance, and 
showing, either that in proportion as governments grow des¬ 
potic, there are modes of religion on which they look with 
peculiar favor, or else that there are modes of religion which 
tend to make governments more despotic than they would 
otherwise become. The world’s peace — what has broken it like 
established religion ? What has made enemies of those that 
belong to the same household, and should have been brethren ? 
What has extended animosity, as it were, from this world to 
the next, and made a Deity a party to human antagonisms, 
and infinity and eternity the sum and the extent of their full 
gratification ? The peaceful current of life, in its most secluded 
scenes and with its most unobstrusive tendencies, has thus 
been dashed with bitterness. As effects different nations, their 
several religions have mingled largely with the causes of war, 
the excitement to war, and the honors rendered to warlike ex¬ 
ploits; and sometimes the contagion has spread from nation to 
nation, until the whole world seemed to be only one vast mass 
of hostility. Knowledge — knowledge must ever be dreaded 
by those v r ho have petrified what is deemed saving truth into 
some i>eculiar, specific, and defined form. They must ever be 
afraid lest this should be impaired or enlarged. In science they 
gee a deadly enemy; for v 7 hen have priests and priesthoods, 
and the advocates of established religions, or of religions that 
have attained a sort of half-way to establishment, embodied in 
creeds and articles—when have they not been jealous of sci¬ 
ence? when have they not had, at least, a latent hostility 
towards, and suspicion of, the progress of scientific discovery ? 
It has been thus in modern times, and in the great days of 
scientific advance.” 


BENJAMIN OFFEN. 


C95 


BENJAMIN OFFEN. 

Was born in England in the year 1772. He was a shoemaker 
and brought up his sons to the same trade. But having devoted 
all his leisure hours to self-improvement, and being naturally 
of an independent turn of thought, he became in time a very 
well-informed man, and, as every thorough , self-taught student 
is very apt to become, a decided Infidel. In course of time (we 
have not the date), be emigrated to New York city, where he 
became lecturer to the '‘Society of Moral Philanthropists,’' at 
Tammany Hall, and in which capacity he continued for twelve 
years, giving great satisfaction, producing a deep impression, 
and sowing the good Liberal seed, whose full harvest is yet des¬ 
tined to be the moral and physical salvation of the commercial 
metropolis of America. Being well built, with striking and 
intelligent features, blest Avith a powerful voice and good enun¬ 
ciation, and, moreover, being a master of pointed logic, unspar¬ 
ing wit, and telling humor, he always fixed the attention of his 
auditors. In all his dealings he was very conscientious. He 
was also of a very kind and benevolent disposition, and very 
sensitive to exhibitions of cruelty to man or animals. 

Mr. Often was the author of “A Legacy to the Friends of 
Free Discussion: being a Review of the Principle Hist orical 
Facts and Personages of the Books known as the Old and New 
Testament, with Remarks on the Morality of Nature.” This 
little volume is quite well written on the whole —the argu¬ 
ments and deductions good —and the conclusion very happy. 
In this conclusion he recapitulates the pernicious effect of 
religious faith, its failure to moralize the world, and its intol¬ 
erance and persecution. He then shows that Infidel morality is 
founded in reason and the laws that govern human beings, and 
that it is far superior to faith in promoting good works, inducing 
correct conduct, and insuring human happiness and improve¬ 
ment. After a life of great usefulness in the field of Free- 
thought, Benjamin Offen died in New York City, May 12th, 1848. 


696 


ABNEE KNEELAND. 


ABNER KNEELAND. 

This brave independent thinker was born in Gardner, Massa¬ 
chusetts, April 7, 1774. His father was of Irish descent and 
his mother English. He worked at the carpenter’s trade up to 
1803. In 1801 he joined the Baptist Church and commenced 
preaching in the following July, and continued to do so till 
March, 1803, when he became separated from the denomination 
in consequence of his believing in the doctrine of the “restitu¬ 
tion of all things.” After this he united with the Universalists. 
He served as a minister in that denomination till the Autumn 
of 1811. The Universalist Church in Charlestown was erected 
for his use, and the one in Callowhill street, Philadelphia, was 
erected under his direction. He held a debate on one occasion 
with the Rev. McCalla in Lombard street church, where he 
preached seven years. 

In 1825 he removed to New York City and becoming con¬ 
vinced that the system of Christianity is founded upon Pagan 
dogmas, he boldly renounced it and no longer preached its doc¬ 
trines even in the modified form of Universalism. This of course 
caused the estrangement of the friends of years, and many who 
had taken him warmly by the hand now turned a cold shoulder 
towards him. But his was too brave a heart to give back or 
yield what he conceived to be the truth, whether friends were 
estranged or foes were confirmed. 

In 1829 he removed to Boston, and in 1831 he commenced 
the publication of “The Boston Investigator,” a noted Liberal 
paper and one that has continued longer in existence that any 
other paper of the character in the world. 

In 1833 he was arrested, indicted and tried for blasphemy, 
for presuming to say openly, that he “did not believe in the 
God which the Universalists did.” The verdict was confirmed 
in the Court of Appeals in 1836, and he was sentenced to two 
months’ imprisonment. This unjust and oppressive sentence 
was carried out near the cradle of American liberty; and it is 


ABNER KNEELAND. 


697 


indeed a shame to the glorious old commonwealth of Massachu¬ 
setts, which she would to-day erase from her history had she 
now the power to do so. 

Kneeland was so earnest in the investigation of the Scrip¬ 
tures that he willingly submitted to the labor of learning the 
Hebrew, the Greek and the Roman languages to enable him to 
obtain their original meaning. He published a “Greek Testa¬ 
ment according to Griesbach,” also “A Greek and English 
Testament with notes.” In 1829 he delivered in Broadway Hall, 
New York, a series of lectures, entitled “A Review of the 
Evidences of Christianity,” which were afterwards published in 
one volume, and lias since passed through several editions. He 
also wrote and published a review of his own trial, conviction 
and imprisonment. 

Kneeland was also among the first orthographic reformers of 
this country, and proposed a new alphabet with a distinct letter 
for each element of the human voice, and of spelling, writing 
and printing languages according to the sound of the words 
and the letters. 

In consequence of the persecutions which the Christian 
powers of Boston visited upon him, he found it necessary to sever 
his connection with “ The Boston Investigator ” and it passed 
into the hands of Josiah P. Mendum and was edited by Horace 
Seaver, who for nearly forty years have coutinued its publica¬ 
tion to the full satisfaction of the Liberals of the United 
States. 

Mr. Kneeland subsequently moved to Iowa and settled on a 
farm, passing the remainder of his life in quietude and compar¬ 
ative seclusion, respected and esteemed by his neighbors and 
acquaintances. He peacefully died but a few years ago at an 
advanced age. He was a man of moral worth and would have 
had the friendship of all who became acquainted with him had 
he not had the temerity to avow his honest convictions upon 
theological subjects. 


698 


GILBERT YALE. 


GILBERT VALE. 

The best biographer of Thomas Paine was born in London, 
England, October 28, 1788. The persecutions of the Dissenters 
or Non-conformists by the Established Church, caused him, 
early in life, to identify himself with Freethinkers. In 1827, 
dissatisfied with both the Church and the Government, he 
emigrated to the City of New York, where he established him¬ 
self as a teacher of navigation and the higher mathematics. 
For forty years none stood higher than he as teacher of these 
important branches of study — specially important in a large 
seaport city. 

In 1834 he published the first Sunday paper ever issued in 
this country — “The Citizen of the World.” This was followed 
by “The Sunday Reporter” and the “Beacon.” In all of these 
sheets he freely discussed all political, scientific, and religious 
subjects alike, without fear or favor. 

In order, while living witnesses could yet be obtained, to 
correct certain evident falsehoods which had been promulgated 
concerning Thomas Paine, Mr. Yale undertook to write a new 
Life of the “Author-hero of the Revolution,” interspersed with 
critical and explanatory observations on his writings. When 
he commenced his task, there were already four lives of Paine 
extant, that of Oldys, a tool of Lord Liverpool; that of Cheet- 
ham, a sycophant of the British Government; that of Rick¬ 
man, a good but vain Boswell-friend; and that of Sherwin, very 
friendly, but somewhat incorrect, and almost exclusively 
adapted to a London reader. Cheetham, in his biography had 
charged Paine with being the paramour of Madame Bonneville, 
with being drunken and dirty in his person, etc. Mr. Yale 
thoroughly examined into these and other charges, and found 
them to be a tissue of falsehoods, gotten up on purpose to 
glorify Christ and Christianity by means of vilifying Paine and 
Humanity. 


GILBERT YALE. 


699 


Cheetham’s miser ble scandal about Madame Bonneville was 
virtually disproved by the libel fine o'* two hundred and fifty 
dollars imposed upon him by a court of justice, the jury being 
composed of men of different political sentiments, who returned 
in a few minutes a verdict of guilty. 

Mr. Yale’s Book contains a great mass of valuable and very 
readable information about Paine not to be found elsewhere; 
and it is hoped that the reader will always avail himself of 
bright and effective weapons from this full armory whereby to 
manfully meet any attack that may be made on him on this 
ground by the slander-poisoned darts of wily and dishonorable 
Christians. 

Besides the above, Mr. Yale also published “ Fanaticism — a 
History of the Matthias Imposture,” “Maria Monk,” and “As¬ 
tronomy and Ancient Worship,” with some other brochures. 
He also invented anew “ Planisphere,” and published many 
new astronomical problems. 

In 1836 he publicly discussed with Dr. Sleigh the authenticity 
of the Scriptures. In 1839 he originated and completed the 
erection of a monument to the memory of Thomas Paine, near 
New Bochelle, N. Y. It is a chaste structure, of purely Gre¬ 
cian character and simplicity of form. The summit is twelve 
and a half feet above the level of the road, with a wreathed 
bust of Paine in alto relievo, and the words “ Thomas Paine, 
Author of Common Sense,” inscribed thereon. 

In 1848 Mr. Yale visited Europe, meeting in London and 
Paris with many of the leading revolutionists. It was a critical 
year, and, doubtless, with his well-prepared mind, he received 
impressions and information about peoples and governments, 
which furnished him choice food for reflection during the 
remainder of his life. It is to be regretted that he did not pub¬ 
lish full reminiscences of that period from his peculiar point of 
view. 

Mr. Yale died July 17, 1866, at the ripe age of seventy-eight. 
As long as the memory of Thomas Paine will last, that of Gil¬ 
bert Yale will also be held in grateful commemoration. 


700 


GEORGE COMBE. 


GEORGE COMBE. 

Among the bright moral and intellectual lights which Scot¬ 
land has produced, George Combe stands in the front rank. 
Few countries have produced nobler and better men. He was 
born in Edinburgh in 1788. He was one of the oldest sons of a 
family of seventeen children. He studied law and practised it 
in his native city some twenty-five years. In 1816 he heard 
Spurzheim lecture upon Phrenology and soon became a convert 
to the new science. In 1819 he published his “ Essays on 
Phrenology” a later edition of which was called “System of 
Phrenology.” In 1823 he established “The Edinburgh Phrenol¬ 
ogical Journal.” He Avas frequently engaged in warm contro¬ 
versy with those opposed to his views. One of these was with 
Francis Jeffrey in 1823, in consequence of an article condemna¬ 
tory of phrenology, which had appeared in the Edinburgh 
Review, and one later with Sir William Hamilton. His princi¬ 
pal work, and one which is scarcely surpassed by any volume 
of equal size in the English language is his “Constitution of 
Man considered in relation to external objects,” (1828). This 
work was attacked in all conceivable ways from every conceiv¬ 
able point of view, by every variety of antagonists. The more 
it Avas assailed the better it sold. It attained such popularity 
that it soon passed through ten editions and no less than thirty 
editions have been published in the United States; not less 
than 500,000 copies of this great Avork have been sold, It has 
been translated into se\ r eral languages. The Avork proves 
clearly that the Avorld is governed by unchangeable, natural 
laws and that the chimeras of “special providences” and “the 
efficacy of prayer,” are mere idle fallacies, the result of ages of 
ignorance and superstition. In May, 1829, W. It. Henderson 
executed a deed of settlement, by which he conveyed to certain 
trustees such funds as he might die possessed of to be used in 
furnishing “Combe’s Constitution of Man” at a moderate price 
to the laboring classes. This fund Avas used and large num- 


GEORGE COMBE. 701 

bers of the work were in this way placed within reach of the 
poor. 

Mr. Combe married a daughter of the actress Mrs. Siddons 
in 1733 and about the same time delivered in several places, 
“ Lectures on Popular Education,” which were published, 3rd 
edition in 1818. 

In 1838 he visited the United States and passed two or three 
years in this country, giving a large number of lectures upon 
his favorite theme of Phrenology. He was probably the ablest 
mind who embraced that science after Spurzheim and he took 
great delight in expounding it to the people. He made many 
converts to the system, both in Great Britain and in the United 
States. 

He published his “Notes on the United States of America” 
in 1818 which was followed by other works. 

He died in 1858 in Iron Park in the South of England, at the 
age of seventy years. He was a genial, estimable, highly moral 
man, his intellectual faculties largely predominating over the 
animal propensities. He is admitted on all hands to be the 
ablest writer that ever advocated the science of Phrenology. 
His valuable writings upon the necessity of studying and 
observing nature’s laws the world will not soon forget. 

Andrew Combe, M. D., was a younger brother (born in 1797), 
who practiced medicine in Edinburgh for several years. He 
also became a strong believer in Phrenology and was a distin¬ 
guished writer on Physiology and other Scientific Subjects. His 
“ Principles of Physiology applied to the preservation of Health ” 
was first published in 1834 and subsequently passed through 
some twenty editions. In 1836 he was appointed consulting 
physician to the King of Belgium. Among his principal works 
are “Observations on Mental Derangements,” and “Physiology 
of Digestion.” He died in 1847 aged fifty years. 

The two were a pair of brothers, great in intellect and great 
in their desires to benefit the human race. Their superiors 
have been seldom seen. 


702 


SIB WILLIAM HAMILTON. 


SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 


One of the greatest metaphysicians of modern times saw the 
light of Glasgow, March 8, 1788. Sir William Hamilton w’as 
a descendant of the ancient Scottish family of the Hamiltons of 
Preston. He received his education at Balliol College, Oxford, 
where he obtained first-class honors. In 1821 he received the 
appointment of Professor of Universal History in Edinburgh 
University, which position afforded him much leisure for the 
pursuit of his favorite metaphysical studies. 

In 1829 he commenced to write for the “Edinburgh Review” 
on logic, mental philosophy, and other subjects. Among the 
titles of these essays or reviews are the “ Philosophy of the 
Absolute: Cousin-Schelling,” (1829,) “Philosophy of Perception: 
Reid and Browm,” (1830,) and “Logic: the Recent English 
Treatise on that Science,” (1833.) In the essay first named he 
combated the systems of Schelling and Hegel. 

In 1836 he was promoted to the chair of logic and meta¬ 
physics in Edinburgh University, which he filled until his death. 
Previous to this appointment he had acquired a European repu¬ 
tation by his vast erudition and extraordinary acuteness of 
intellect. “His influence and success as a professor were aug¬ 
mented by a noble person, a sonorous voice, and perfect dig¬ 
nity of manner.” 

In 18£5 he was partially disabled by paralysis, which, how¬ 
ever, did not impair his mental activity. In 1846 he published 
an edition of Reid’s works, with notes and supplimentary dis¬ 
sertations; and in 1852, “Discussions on Philosophy and Litera¬ 
ture, Education, and University Reform, chiefly from the ‘Edin¬ 
burgh Review,” enlarged, with Notes, and other Additions,” 
(1 yol. 8vo). His last publication was an edition of the Works 
of Dugald Stewart in nine voluntfes (1854-56).—He died in Edin¬ 
burgh. May 6, 1856. 

Hamilton combined the power of analysis and generalization 
in a degree perhaps unequaled since the time of Aristotle. And 


Sill WILLIAM HAMILTON. 


703 


we think it may be safely said that in a thorough acquaintance 
with the history of philosophy he has never been surpassed by 
any writer. The “Edinburgh Review ” declared that he had 
attained to the very highest distinction as a philosopher, that 
■in some respects he was decidedly superior to any of his illus¬ 
trious predecessors, Reid, Stewart, or Brown, and that with a 
remarkable power of analysis and discrimination he combi ed 
great decision and elegance of style, and a degree of erudition 
that was almost without a parallel. 

It was for these very reasons that Sir William Hamilton 
frankly confessed that he could not know the Unknowable or 
condition the Unconditioned. What a pity he was not some 
ignorant, flippant, and vulgar Bible writer, or prophet, or 
priest, or modern preacher! If he was any of these, how easily 
and how gracefully he could, with his little ecclesiastical tape 
measure the Infinite to the fraction of an inch, and thereby 
absolutely solve the Absolute! 

Theis'.ic philosophers have been pretty evenly divided on 
the question of the Cognizability of the Infinite by the Finite 
— or, in plain English, the possibility of man knowing God. 
Amongst those who have asserted the affirmative, the theories 
to account for the obvious paradox of Infinitude being known — 
i. e., grasped, or comprehended —by the Finite having been 
various. The following are the chief variations of view which 
have prevailed among leading metaphysicians of the century. 
They are given in Sir William’s own words, as being “ a state¬ 
ment of the opinions which may be entertained regarding the 
Unconditioned, as an immediate object of knowledge and of 
thought. . . . These opinions may be reduced to four: —i. 
The Unconditioned is incognizable and inconceivable; i:s notion 
being only negative of the conditioned, which last can alone 
be positively known or conceived.” This was the opinion 
maintained by Hamilton himself. In other words, although he 
called on man to believe in God, he admitted that man could 
not know God. <*n. It [the Unconditioned] is not an object of 
knowledge; but its notion as a regulative principle of the mind 
itself, is more than a mere negation of the Conditioned.” This 
was tne view maintained by Kant. “ hi. It is cognizable, but 
not conceivable; it can be known by a sinking back into iden- 


704 


SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 


tity with the Absolute, but it is incomprehensible by conscious¬ 
ness and reflection, which are only of the relative and the 
different.” This theory was identified with Schelling’s name, 
“iv. It is cognizable and conceivable by consciousness and 
reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality.” This was 
the view of Cousin. 

The following sentence is from one of Sir William’s Edin¬ 
burgh Review articles, in which he very clearly states the impos¬ 
sibility of cognizing “Deity” by man: — “ Thought cannot 
transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under 
the antithesis of a subject and an object of thought, known 
only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other while, 
independently of all this, all that we know, either of subject or 
object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of 
the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the phenom¬ 
enal. The fair inference from this is, that, as the conditions of 
thought cannot reduce Deity to any of these categories, the 
Absolute is unknowable to man .” Indeed the whole tenor of 
the Hamiltonian philosophy distinctly leads to no other goal 
than this —that the cognizable existence of God being unde- 
monstrable, there is no moral or dutiful obligation on man to 
recognize his being and make him the object of his worship. 
In saying this, we are not unmindful of the fact, that while 
utterly discarding one of the old lines of argument by which 
the existence of God was sought to be established, he clung 
with the countervailing firmness of an inherited personal con¬ 
viction to another, which he thought sufficient to effect the 
demonstration, but which other intellectual giants who have 
succeeded him esteem as the lamentably weak spot which dis¬ 
figured and diseased his otherwise magnificent mental calibre. 

But for all this, his questionings of received opinions, the 
daring manner in which he plunged his students and his readers 
into all kinds of doubt, could not fail to be highly stimulative 
to Ereethought. Except occasionally in the heat of controversy, 
he never wandered from the beautiful tolerance which he was 
so fond of advocating. As to his attitude towards his students, 
he even proclaimed himself rather their fellow-learner than 
preceptor. He boldly told them that the first lesson he had to 
teach them was to doubt, to doubt daringly, to doubt everything 


SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 


705 


until some satisfactory foothold is gained. True it is that the 
foothold which he proclaimed to be satisfactory to him is not 
accepted as satisfactory by the greatest thinkers who succeeded 
him. But the candor of his course, and the fine healthy en¬ 
couragement to intellectual skepticism which he inculcated for 
twenty years at Edinburgh, and which has by this time inocu¬ 
lated the whole philosophical world, are not the less admirable 
and memorable. 

Sir William Hamilton delivered his lectures from a chair, 
above which the following suggestive motto was inscribed: 

“On earth there is nothing great but man; 

In man there is nothing great but mind.” 

Doubtless he interpreted the sentiment somewhat metaphysic¬ 
ally. Our best thinkers of to-day interpret it psychologically , 
basing their psychology on the bed-rock of physiology, from 
which they deduce that in man as in the animals, the phenom¬ 
ena of mind , in its last analysis, is, after all, but the product 
of brute necessity. And this psychological materialism, if 
carried out fuliy and fairly to conclusions, thus inevitably 
results in theological Atheism; as it has been well expressed, 
nullns in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo deus — if 
there be no soul in the microcosm [man], there is no God in 
the macrocosm [the Universe]. 

Before parting with Hamilton we may as well state that 
never, before or since, was there in Oxford such a thorough 
“examination ” of any candidate as his. He triumphed through 
it all. Of this there is a vivid tradition among Oxford under¬ 
graduates to this day. 

Another peculiar characteristic of his was the wonderful 
effect which his grand presence and magnificent eloquence had 
on his students. Probably no professor ever induced such 
conflicting emotions of wonder, awe, the eagerest curiosity, the 
consciousness of strength and dignity, the conviction of little¬ 
ness and insignificance, in the minds of his disciples. 


706 


BYRON. 


BYRON. 

This brilliant genius and talented poet justly takes a place 
with the world’s Infidels and Thinkers. Few men have lived 
who at the age of thirty-six years thought so much and wrote 
So much as did Byron, who, at that early age completed his 
brief career. 

George Gordon Noel Byron was the son of Captain Byron 
and Catherine Gordon, a Scottish heiress, and was born in Lon¬ 
don, January, 1788. The father and mother were illy mated, 
and in 1790 the mother of the poet having been deserted by her 
husband, took up her residence in Aberdeen, Scotland. Here 
her son took his rudimentary lessons in education at a day- 
school. When between six and seven his mother took him wit h 
her on a visit to the Highlands, the rugged scenery of which, 
even at that early age, made an indelible impression uyon his 
mind. 

When ten years old he succeeded to the estate and title of 
William, fifth Lord Byron, his grand-uncle, who had resided at 
Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, where he died in May, 
1798. Soon after his mother took him to London and consulted 
distinguished surgeons with regard to the club-foot with which 
the young lord w. s born, but it was found the deformity could 
not be removed, and the proud lord was compelled to endure 
the mortification of it as long as he lived. 

During his school-days Byron exhibited many traits of noble¬ 
ness and personal bravery. On more than one occasion when 
he saw a weakly or slender boy imposed upon by a stouter one, 
he espoused the cause of the former and became his champion. 
In this way he won the deepest regard of those who had none 
to defend them. That he was frequently passionate "and impet¬ 
uous cannot be denied. 

While attending school at Harrow iJb formed a romantic 
attachment for Miss Chaworth, the heiress of Annesley, and 
would have taken her as a life companion, but she did not 


BYRON. 


707 


return his affection. He often affirmed in after years that it 
would have been much better for him had that lady consented 
to be his wife. 

In 1805 Byron went to Trinity College, and two years after U 
left it without a degree. During his stay at the University he 
published his first volume of poems, entitled “ Hours of Idle¬ 
ness” [1807], which was severely criticised in the “Edinburgh 
Review.” By way of retaliation Byron wrote his “English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” a caustic and scathing satire, 
which created a lively sensation and convinced the critics that 
Byron’s genius was not to be terror-stricken nor silenced. 

In 1809, accompanied by his friend, John Cam Hobhouse, 
Byron set out on a journey over Europe. He was absent two 
years. On his return he published the first two cantos of 
“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” the success of which was so 
extraordinary and unlooked for, that he said, he “ awoke one 
morning and found himself famous.” 

In 1811 he took his seat in the House of Lords, with the evi¬ 
dent intention of devoting himself to politics. He addressed 
the House three times. His most important speech was upon 
the Catholic classes, and was listened to with attention. But 
he soon lost his taste for a political life. In 1813 he published 
“The Giaour” (i. e., “Infidel ”), an Oriental tale in verse, which 
contains some of the most exquisite poetry found in the English 
language. Near the close of the same year he brought out “The 
Bride of Abydos,” which materially increased the poet’s repu¬ 
tation. In January, 1814, was first published “The Corsair,” of 
which it is said over fourteen thousand copies were sold in a 
single day. Other important poems of his brought out soon 
after, were “Lara,” “The Siege of Corinth,” “Parisina,” and 
“The Prisoner of Chillon.” 

On January 2, 1815, Byron married Miss Anna Isabella Mill- 
bank, only daughter of the baronet Sir Ralph Millbank, after¬ 
wards Noel. She was esteemed a great heiress. The union did 
not prove to be a happy one. His irregularities were doubtless 
calculated to destroy domestic harmony. Lady Byron bore him 
December 10, 1815, a daughter, Ada, who afterwards became the 
Countess of Lovelace. She soon returned to her father’s house, 
taking her child with her, and he never saw either of them 


708 


BYEON. 


again. In the spring of 1816 he quitted England with the deter¬ 
mination of never again returning to his native land. He 
passed through Belgium, visited the field of Waterloo and 
dwelt some time near Geneva in Switzerland. Here he wrote 
the third canto of “Childe Harold.” He afterwards visited 
Italy and took up his residence in Venice. He next visited 
Kavenna, and during his sojourn in that city fie formed a 
liaison with Countess Guiccioli, whose brilliance and sprightli¬ 
ness greatly attracted him. 

During his residence in Pisa he passed much of his time 
with Shelley and Leigh Hunt, and the three conducted a period¬ 
ical called the “Liberal.” There was a strong feeling of friend¬ 
ship between Shelley and himself, and it is claimed that Shelley 
exerted a beneficial control over him. On one occasion Shelley 
saved the life of Byron at the great risk of his own, the perfect 
unselfishness of which conduct greatly struck Byron. 

After the tragic death of Shelley, who was drowned in a squall, 
or according to later rumors, murdered by some treacherous 
boatmen, who took him to be a wealthy English lord with 
money on his person, Byron quarreled with Hunt, and the jour¬ 
nal was dropped. He passed a part of the same year in Genoa, 
and his sympathies soon becoming strongly enlisted in favor of 
the Grecians who were struggling for liberty against the Turks 
and he resolved to devote his services to their cause. During 
his residence in Italy Byron wrote some of his most remarkable 
poems, viz: the fourth canto of “Childe Harold,” “Mazeppa,” 
“Manfred,” “Cain, a Mystery,” Marino Faliero,” “The Two 
Foscari,” “Sardanapalus,” “Werner,” and “Don Juan.” 

In the summer of 1823 he left Italy and proceeded to Cepha- 
lonia, where he remained some months. In January, 1824, he 
removed to Missolonghi. The exposure which he incurred while 
making preparations for the siege of Lefanto, then in posses¬ 
sion of the Turks, laid the foundation of the illness of which 
he afterwards died. About the middle of February he had a 
9 severe convulsive fit. During the extreme prostration that fol¬ 

lowed this attack, a crowd of Suliotes, whom lie had engaged 
to fight under him, rose in mutiny, and bursting into his apart¬ 
ment, brandished their arms furiously and demanded their pay. 
Byron retained a perfect self-possession, and by his calm and 


BYRON. 


709 


determined courage, awed them into submission. Count Gamba, 
(brother of Countess Guiccioli,) who was constantly with Lord 
Byron during the last few months of his life, says of him: “It 
is impossible to do justice to the coolness and magnanimity 
which he displayed upon every trying occasion. Upon trifling 
Occasions he was certainly irritable; but the aspect of danger 
calmed him in an instant. ... A more undaunted man in 
the hour of peril never breathed.” 

Having caught a severe cold on the ninth of April, he was 
attacked with fever and violent rheumatic pain. At last inflam¬ 
mation seized upon his brain and terminated his life on the 
nineteenth of April, 1824. 

As a man, Byron certainly was not free from serious faults, 
but he possessed one of the noblest, bravest, and most mag¬ 
nanimous natures that ever existed. In palliation of his faults, 
it may be truthfully said that he was reared under most unfa¬ 
vorable conditions. In spite of all the disadvantages of his mis- 
education and hereditary temperament, he exhibited many 
admirable traits of character, among which were a princely 
generosity, and a ready and true sympathy for the sufferings of 
his fellow beings, even those in the lowest walks of life. Moore 
says of him : “ The inmates of his family were extremely attached 
to him, and would have endured anything on his account,” and 
that “he was most unostentatious in his charities.” 

It must be remembered he died when he was still a young 
man, and his career only lasted while the exuberance of life 
and passion was at full vigor. Had he lived till the mature 
years of middle and after-life had produced their beneficial 
results, it may easily be believed that Lord Byron would have 
shone with increased moral lustre, and that he would have left 
such a record behind him as the world has scarcely known. 

Among the most remarkable characteristics of Byron’s poetry, 
two are deserving of particular attention. The first, his power 
of expressing intense emotion, especially when associated with 
the darker passions of the mind. The other is the exquisite 
taste and wonderful felicity in the use of language. In these 
respects no poet has ever surpassed him. Says Macaulay: 
“Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole elo¬ 
quence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair: from maniac laugh- 


710 


BYRON. 


ter to piercing lamentation, there is not a single note of human 
anguish of which he was not master.” 

The Christian Pollock thus wrote of Byron 

“ He touched liis harp, and nations heard entranced, 

As some vast river of unfailing source, 

Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed, 

And opened new fountains in the human heart. 

Where fancy halted, weary in her flight. 

In other men, his fresh as morning rose, 

And soared untrodden heights and seemed at home. 

Where angels bashful looked. Others, tho’ great, 

Beneath their argument seemed struggling whiles; 

He from above descending, stooped to touch 
The loftiest thought; and proudly stooped, as tho' 

It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature’s self 
He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest 
At will with all her glorious majesty. 

He laid his hand upon the ‘ ‘ ocean’s mane ” 

And played familiar "with his hoary locks. 

Stood on the Alps, stood on the Appenines, 

And with the thunder talked, as friend to friend; 

And wove his garland of the lightning’s wing, 

In sportive twist — the lightning’s fiery wing, 

Whieh as the footsteps of the dreadful God, 

Marching upon the storm in vengeance seemed — 

Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung 
His evening song, beneath his feet conversed. 

Suns, moons and stars, and clouds his sisters were: 

Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms. 

His brothers — younger brothers, whom he scarce 
As equals deemed.” 

In theology Byron had no confidence or belief. He spurned 
the trickery and subterfuges of the priesthood, and they never 
will forgive him for the scathing things he said of their systems 
and their practices. Byron’s want of faith in the Christian 
creeds is very conspicuous in his “Cain, a Mystery,” and it 
bristles out in all his poems. 


RICHARD CARLILE. 


711 


RICHARD CARLILE. 

The subject of this sketch was born at Ashburton, Devon¬ 
shire, England, in the year 1790. His early opportunities for 
acquiring an education were limited, and upon leaving school 
he served a while with, a druggist in Exeter, but left him on 
account of being required to do such menial service as did not 
comport with his views. He was afterwards apprenticed to the 
tin plate business, at which he served under a very severe 
master over seven years. He traveled considerably as a jour¬ 
neyman tinman, and found work in various places, visiting 
, London a number of times. 

About this time he formed the acquaintance of a lady seven 
years his senior, (he being twenty-three) whom, after two 
months’ courtship he married. It proved, however, to be one 
of those unhappy unions which had better never have been 
formed. She was a woman of considerable personal attractions, 
and very fair business capacities. She possessed the merit, too, 
of remaining, in after years, faithfully by her husband when he 
was persecuted and imprisoned. Their tempers, however, were 
uncongenial, and in 1832 they mutually separated, no blame 
being charged to either. 

While he was still working at his trade, he applied himself 
to study and strove ambitiously to fit himself for public useful¬ 
ness; but it cannot be claimed that he became a learned man. 
As a brave, persistent defender of a free press and free discus¬ 
sion, he has hardly had a superior in any age. When Wooller 
commenced the publication of an outspoken republican paper 
called the Black Dwarf , but which met with a slow sale, Carlile 
borrowed a pound sterling from his employer, and invested the 
amount in the Black Dwarf , and walked over the city of Lon¬ 
don to induce news-dealers to buy it. He followed this several 
weeks, walking thirty miles a day and realizing but fifteen to 
eighteen pence profit per day. Mr. Sherwin, who was then 
publishing the “ Republican,” seeing Carlile’s sterling value, 


712 


RICHARD CARLILE. 


offered him the publishing of his paper, which he accepted. 
He guaranteed Sherwin against arrest, he taking the responsi¬ 
bility himself. 

Carlile stepped into the ranks of publishers just at the 
moment when such valor and persistence as he possessed were 
greatly needed to stem the torrent of oppression that bore 
down upon those who had the temerity to publish contraband 
or ostracized books and periodicals. He vigorously applied 
himself to publishing such works as were under the ban of 
legal prohibition. He determined to defy the government and 
to maintain the perfect freedom of the press. After two or 
three other works, he commenced the publication of Paine’s 
Political Works, and immediately after he reprinted Wm. 
Hone’s suppressed political squibs, called “ Parodies on the 
Book of Common Prayer.” This cost Carlile eighteen weeks* 
imprisonment in the King’s Bench Prison. 

In 1818 Carlile published the Theological Writings of Paine, 
followed by the “Doubts of Infidels,” “Watson Refuted,” 
“Palmer’s Principles of Nature,” and “The God of the Jews.” 
In the fall of 1819 no less than six indictments were procured 
against him. A verdict by a Christian Court and jury was 
easily rendered against him, and he was Sentenced to a fine of 
£1,500 ($7,500) and to three years’ imprisonment in Dorchester 
jail, to which loathsome place he was driven off liand-cuffed at 
midnight. Carlile spent this long, cruel imprisonment in study 
and improvement of his mind, At the close of his trial he 
published a report of his defense, in which he took good care 
to introduce much of Paine’s “Age of Keason.” It met with 
an immense sale, and to stop it, a prosecution was begun 
against Mrs. Carlile by the authorities, but which was magnan¬ 
imously dropped upon her promising to discontinue the sale. 
She was not, however, long left unmolested. Under pretence 
of obtaining the fines against Carlile, the Christian Sheriff, 
with a writ of levari facias from the Court of the King’s Bench, 
took possession of Carlile’s house, shop, furniture, stock in 
trade, and closed the place. 

By Carlile’s desire, however, in January, 1S20, Mrs. C. again 
commenced with the slight means she was able to scrape 
together, but in Pebruary she was arrested. On this occasion 


RICHARD CARLILE. 


713 


she escaped from a flaw in the indictment; but another trial 
soon was begun by the Attorney-General, and in February, 
1821, she became a fellow-prisoner with her husband in Dor¬ 
chester jail. She was sentenced for two years, and not one 
jot was abated by her Christian oppressors, although she was 
confined in childbed in a most comfortless prison. She was 
not allowed proper attendance, and the neglect with whioh she 
was treated bore heavily upon the heart of Carlile, and he did 
for her what he never asked for himself—made a petition to 
Peel to grant her a release. The petition was not granted. 

Upon the imprisonment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlile, his sister 
Mary Ann was brave enough to attempt to conduct his pub¬ 
lishing business. She too was prosecuted and confined in 
prison with her brother, and fined £500 (or $2,500). Then a Mrs. 
Wright and seventeen men raised some funds, and attempted 
to continue the publishing business; but by the same merciful 
followers of Jesus they were arrested, and tried and imprisoned 
for periods varying from six months to three years. A second 
seizure was also made of all the books and stock under pretext 
of obtaining the amount of the fines. 

Carlile’s imprisonment was rendered as irksome to him as 
possible. The utmost indignities were practiced upon him, and 
upon his wife and sister. The pious chaplain of the prison 
laughed at their sufferings and complaints, and intimated that 
no degradation could equal their deserts. He even professed to 
be fearful that the thieves in the prison would be contaminated 
by the presence of such vile heretics and republicans. They 
were often denied fresh air and exercise, and when they were 
allowed to go out into the yard, they were treated like caged 
animals and led out by a rope and exposed to the gaze and 
jeers of the passers by. 

Carlile continued to edit the “Republican” during the whole 
of his confinement, and made it more decided upon theological 
questions than ever; and to chafe the minds of his persecutors, 
he dated it in the “Era of the Carpenter’s Wife’s Son.” His 
other publications still were continued, but under considerable 
difficulties. 

When in 1825 his term of imprisonment had expired, he may 
be said to have been the victor; the freedom of the press had 


714 


RICHARD CABLILE. 


been vindicated and established. One brave, unflinching man 
had contended with the minions of power and beat them in 
the game, and though he was afterwards arinoyed and impris¬ 
oned, he had truly accomplished great results. When he again 
engaged in business he used the precaution to have his shop so 
constructed that the book wanted by a customer could be indi¬ 
cated on a dial, and the book projected by the same apparatus, 
without the seller being seen at all. In this way the law was 
effectually evaded. The sale of his books was quadrupled, and 
cheering crowds daily assembled around his windows. The 
number of copies of Paine’s works sold were amazing. In one 
year 20,000 copies were sold. While in prison Carlile’s friends 
kindly contributed to his support. £500 per year were acknowl¬ 
edged in the “Bepublican.” The profits of the business 
amounted to £50 per week, and one week over £500 were taken 
over the counter. 

When Carlile deemed he had secured the freedom of tho 
press, he at once attempted to secure also the freedom of dis¬ 
cussion. In 1829 he organized a Sunday-school for free discus¬ 
sion, and by printed circulars challenged every priest to an 
open debate. But one priest, Bev. David Thorn, of Liverpool, 
had the temerity to accept the challenge, and he withdrew at 
the onset. In 1830, to enlarge the chances for free discussion, 
Carlile engaged a series of buildings and a theater called the 
“Botunda,” which was attended by many men of note. The 
Tories did not attempt to interfere with Carlile and liis friends, 
but when the Whigs came into power, to show their superior 
piety and zeal, they caused him to be again arrested, and he 
was sentenced to two year’s imprisonment in Horsemonger 
Jail for preaching in the Botunda. 

In 1834 and 1835 he passed ten weeks more in prison, for 
refusing to pay Church Bates assessed upon his house in Fleet 
street. When his goods were seized, he retaliated by placing 
in his window two effigies - one a bishoj), the other a distrain¬ 
ing officer. Subsequently Ihe trinity was completed by adding 
the devil to the group, jointly locked arm-in-arm with the 
bishop. This amusing sight very naturally attracted large 
crowds, and Carlile was indicted as a nuisance and was fined 
forty shillings and compelled to give bonds in £200 for himself 


RICHARD CARLILE. 


715 


and £100 each for two others, for good behavior for three years. 
He refused, however, to involve any person in his troubles, and 
he would not give the required security, saying lie would prefer 
to endure the three years’ additional imprisonment. He said: 
“When the gates are open to me I will walk out, but I will not 
pay nor co anything to procure a release.” His total terms of 
imprisonment amounted in the aggregate to nine years and 
four months, and all this for the rights of a free press, a free 
pen, and a free tongue. 

Carlile was an ardent Republican. This was what induced 
him to find customers for the Black Bvoarf. He disapproved of 
Cobbett’s “Register,” because he thought it “failed to go far 
enough.” He was a great admirer of Thomas Paine. On a 
certain occasion he said, “I revere the name of Thomas Paine; 
the image of his honest countenance is ever before me; I have 
him in bust in full lbngtli figure.” On another occasion he 
said: “Liberty is the property of man. A Republic only can 
protect it. Equality means not an equality of riches but of 
rights .” 

As an editor he was industrious and indefatigable. What he 
lacked in literary ability he made up in energy and constant 
industry. He began as a Deist, but as he progressed ho became 
a confirmed Atheist. His habits were marked by great abstem¬ 
iousness. and he strongly advocated the sentiments of temper¬ 
ance. From Dorchester jail he wrote: “It is important to you 
Republicans, that however humble the advocates of your prin¬ 
ciples may be, they should exhibit a clear, moral character to 
the world.” “He never sold a copy of a work that he would 
not read to his own child.” 

In 18S2, as already indicated, himself and wife mutually 
separated. Their disparity of age, temper and characteristics 
prevented their living happily together. In 1819 they agreed to 
a separation, but did not carry it out till the year just named. 
He gave his wife a portion of his property, and they separated 
on good terms and had no quarrel afterwards. 

He subsequently formed a union with another woman, whom 
he w T ould have married could he have obtained a divorce from 
his wife, but not being able to do this, he possessed the inde¬ 
pendence to live with the woman, and loved and acted the part 


71G 


RICHARD CABLILE. 


of a faithful husband towards her, who boro him two children. 
Carlile’s death occurred in this way. He removed from En¬ 
field to Bouverie, Fleet Street, to live on the old field of 
war, and to edit the “Christian Warrior.” While his goods 
were being unloaded, one of his children strayed away, and in 
searching after him he contracted a cold which settled in his 
throat and bronchitis supervened. When his medical friend 
was summoned he pronounced his case incurable. He died on 
the 10th of February 1843, in his fifty-third year. Wishing to 
be useful in death as in life he devoted his body to dissection. 
At his interment a clergyman appeared and insisted upon read¬ 
ing the Church funeral service. His oldest son, Richard, pro¬ 
tested against it, but his wishes were not regarded. The clergy¬ 
man was determined to read the service, whereupon Carlile’s 
family absented themselves. 

The Christians in the locality falsely asserted that Carlile 
recanted his Infidelity upon his death-bed, but it was utterly 
false. The sturdy, brave warrior for freedom, who had passed 
so many years upon the inner side of prison bars, did not flinch 
in the hour of death. He remained steadfast to his honest con¬ 
victions until his last breath was drawn. The courageous, indus¬ 
trious Richard Carlile laid the world under a heavy debt of obli¬ 
gation to him, which can hardly be fully discharged. He was 
an ardent lover of freedom and spent his life in its defense. 

Carlile wrote many good things, but this page will be filled 
out with two or three citations from him, only: “ Many cry out, 
if you take away religion, what will you give us as a substitute ? 
What substitute would you have for an error, a vice, a fever, or 
any other disease? Is it not sufficient to be delivered from it? 

“Religion is an error, inasmuch as it is founded upon no¬ 
tions of Deity, of which when we examine ourselves, we all 
alike find that Ave knoAV nothing; and pretended divine revela¬ 
tions are the Avork of men, and not worthy of the least counte¬ 
nance. They are, Avithout exception, gross impositions upon the 
credulity of mankind.” 

“Morality is the benevolent action of man towards man, and 
is the sum of all that is good and delightful among mankind.” 


EERSCII EL II. 


717 


HERSCHEL IL 

John Frederick William, the only son of Sir William Her- 
schell, was born at Slough, near Windsor, in 1790. He was edu¬ 
cated in St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he displayed 
superior talents for mathematics, and took the degree of B.A. 
He spent eight years (1825-1833) in reviewing the nebulae discov¬ 
ered by his father, of which he published a “ Catalogue arrang¬ 
ed in the order of Right Ascension,” (1833), containing observa¬ 
tions of 2,306 nebulae and clusters. He produced in 1830 a 
treatise on Sound, and another on Light; also an excellent 
“ Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,” 
which acquired a great popularity, and is a standard work. 

In 1834 he established, at his own expense, an observatory 
at Cape Town, Africa, where he passed four years surveying the 
heavens with a reflecting telescope of twenty feet focus and 
eighteen and one-quarter inch clear aperture. Nine years after 
his return, he, in 1847, published the results of his labors, under 
the title “Results of Astronomical Observations made in 1834- 
38 at the Cape of Good Hope, being the Completion of a Teles¬ 
copic Survey of the Whole Surface of the Heavens,” one of the 
most important astronomical works of the nineteenth century. 
His honorable career was appreciated by the learned m n of all 
nations; the Royal Astronomical Society voted him, a second 
time, its gold medal; he was made D.C.L. of Oxford; and in 
1848 he became President of the Royal Astronomical Society. 
His “Outlines of Astronomy” (1849) was received with favor 
and has passed through several editions. He edited an imi ort- 
ant collection of treatises, entitled “Manual of Scientific In¬ 
quiry,” (1849,) published by the Government. These two works 
have made the profound science he adored popular with a large 
section of the reading public. 

He was created a Baronet at the coronation of Queen Vic¬ 
toria. In 1850 he was made Master of the Mint, an appoint¬ 
ment he was compelled to resign in 1855, on account of ill- 


718 


HEKBCHEL 11. 


health. The same year he was chosen a foreign associate of the 
Institute of France. 

Among his recent works are “ Essays from the Edinburgh 
and Quarterly Review,” (1857,) the articles “Meteorology” and 
“Physical Geography” in the “Encyclopaedia Britanniea,” 
(1857-59,) and “Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects,” (1866.) 
He died in 1871. 

“ Sir John Herschel,” says the “London Journal of Science” 
for April, 1868, “combines in his own person the assiduous 
astronomical observer, the acute mathematician, the deep¬ 
thinking philosopher, and the graceful poet. It is not to many 
that intellectual powers of so high an order have been given; 
it is not in many men that we find such perfect balancing of 
those varied powers.” 

In conclusion, we may here say that every new discovery in 
Astronomy, by whomsoever made, only confirms the Copernican 
theory of heliocentrism and the Newtonian doctrine of gravi¬ 
tation — two teachings which are diametrically opposite to the 
Bible Cosmogony. The Herschels would, no doubt, be surprised 
to hear themselves called Infidels; but Infidels they were, 
nevertheless, as well as great Sages and Thinkers. The truth 
of the matter is, every great worker in every field of true sci¬ 
ence assists the cause of Freethought and Infidelity. The 
reader has doubtless noticed long ere this that in our list a 
great many names appear, who, though Christians in outward 
profession, like Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, have probably 
done more than any others to set the current of their agte. 
They have formed a certain cast and tone of mind. They have 
introduced peculiar habits of thought, new modes of reasoning, 
new terMencies of inquiry. The impulse they have given to the 
higher literature has been by that literature communicated to 
the more popular writers; and the impress of these master¬ 
minds is clearly visible in the writings of multitudes who are 
totally unacquainted with their works. That is one reason why 
so many “Christian Infidels” figure in this volume. 


BHELLEY. 


719 


SHELLEY. 


Poets have been called the moral regenerators of mankind! 
They are the creators and preservers of the beautiful, the ex¬ 
plorers and revealers of truth, the divine and unacknowledged 
legislators of the world. It is they who furnish the inspiration, 
the glowing heat, which changes cold propositions of moral 
truth into a resplendent ideal capable of evoking aspiration 
and deyotion. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley may justly be termed the poet of 
Freethought; since he was one of the sweetest singers of human 
emancipation — civil, social, and religious. He was a lover of 
freedom, mental, spiritual aad political. He was the greatest 
poet, and therefore the greatest Englishman of modern times. 

The son and heir of a wealthy English baronet, he •was 
ushered into the world in the midst of wealth and fashion, at 
Field Place, county of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. The 
family from which he derived origin was both ancient and 
illustrious —having a tradition of the misty times of Charle¬ 
magne, and a history which numbered many valorous warriors 
and men of mighty renown from the period of Edward I. His 
father. Sir Timothy Shelley, had been left one of the most 
opulent and wealthy baronets of the kingdom; with three hun¬ 
dred thousand pounds in the funds, and twenty thousand 
pounds per annum. Elizabeth Pilfold, a lady celebrated for 
her rare beauty, became his wife, by whom he had a family of 
two sons and five daughters. Of these children Percy Bysshe 
was the eldest; and he is described as havjng been a very 
beautiful boy, with a snowy complexion, ringlets, and dreamy, 
deep-blue eyes, exquisite hands and feet, and though “a being 
all compact of fire,” yet of a gentle and affectionate disposition. 

When six years of age he was sent to a day school, where 
he began learning Latin. At fifteen he went to Eton, where 
his spirit manifested itself by an unflin lilng opposition to the 
fagging system, and revolt against the severe discipline of the 


720 


SHELLEY. 


school. The coarseness and hard discipline of the principal, 
end the taunts and persecutions of his unappreciative school¬ 
fellows, made his stay at this school a terrible experience to a 
youth of his intense sensitiveness. But he finally triumphed 
in this school-rebellion and had his way. His paroxysms of 
rage into which he was often provoked were generally followed 
by kindly acts calculated to disarm his school-fellows of their 
ill-will. Though thrice expelled from Eton in consequence of 
his ebullitions of rage, he still attained considerable proficiency 
in several branches of learning. 

From Eton, Shelley went to Oxford. There, at the age of 
eighteen, he published a volume of political rhymes, entitled 
“Margaret Nicholson’s Remains.” (Margaret Nicholson was a 
woman who tried to assassinate George III.) He also wrote at 
this time a pamphlet in defense of Atheism. He sent a copy 
of this pamphlet to the head of each of the Colleges in Oxford, 
with a challenge to discuss and answer. The answer he re¬ 
ceived was an edict expelling him from Oxford. 

His friend and fellow-student, Hogg, shared his expulsion. 
The two friends went up to London and took lodgings at 15 
Poland Street. Shelley’s father ^vas greatly displeased, and the 
young author was obliged to live on his sister's savings of 
pocket money. Forgiveness was finally proffered Percy by his 
family on condition that he should relinquish all intercourse 
with his Atheistic companion, Hogg. This he refused, preferr¬ 
ing honorable poverty to disgraceful comfort purchased by the 
sacrifice of friendship. 

He had been persecuted at Eton for the resistance he 
always offered to despotism. He had been expelled from Ox¬ 
ford, with great injustice, for Lis conscientious and independent 
opinions. Thus early in life he found himself excluded from 
his father’s house, and an outcast from the society of his equals 
for acting in accordance with the dictates of his reason. 

The slight affinity existing between him and his few acquaint¬ 
ances was now sacrificed; and it would be difficult to conceive 
a greater loneliness of the heart than that experienced by the 
gentle and pure-hearted Shelley for his devotion to truth. 
Fragile in health aud frame; of the most irreproachable habits 
and morals; full of generosity and universal kindness; glowing 


SHELLEY. 


721 


with the poet’s ardor and an intellectual love of wisdom; 
resolved, at every personal sacrifice, to do rigli; ; binning with 
a desire for affection and sympathy —the warm-hearted and 
sensitive Shelley, ere lie was nineteen, was cast forth as a crimi¬ 
nal and treated as a reprobate. 

At the end of a month his friend Hogg left him, repairing 
to a conveyancer’s office at York. Shelley’s school-girl sisters 
came to his aid at this time, and with their little savings 
averted absolute want. The young man’s food was simply 
bread, sometimes seasoned with a few raisins; his beverage was 
generally water. If ho drank tea or coffee, he would take no 
sugar with it, because the produce of the cane was then obtain¬ 
ed by slave labor. He was an utter stranger to all sensual 
pleasures, and to the lax habits of life too common among 
young men of his age. 

Shelley’s pecuniary embarrassment was such while living 
in Poland street that he was often -without the means of meet¬ 
ing the necessary expenses of the day; but this did not prevent 
him from performing acts of charily and munificence. On one 
occasion he pawned his favorite micioscope in order to relieve 
a case of distress. 

The fruits of his sister’s loving economy were secretly trans¬ 
mitted to him by a charming young girl, named Harriet West¬ 
brook, a companion of the Misses Shelley at school at Bromp- 
ton. This girl was an acknowledged beauty, and her visits with 
remittances to his dingy lodgings w r ere, to the susceptible 
fancy of the chivalric Shelley, like the advent of a celestial 
being. The upshot was, that after enduring, like him, consid¬ 
erable parental persecution, she declared her readiness to fly 
-with him and become his mistress. But notwithstanding the 
young poet already entertained his pet theory of marriage, 
(which was free-love in the highest and purest sense of the 
term,) he refused to allow her to become his wife without a 
legal marriage. They went to Edinburgh in September, 1811, 
and were duly made man and wife by the laws of Scotland. 
Shelley was but nineteen at this time, and his noble resistance 
to the pressing temptations of youth and opportunity, and the 
sacrifice of his peculiar social theories in this instance, should 
always be remembered to his credit. 


722 


SHELLEY. 


Of course Shelley’s aristocratic family regarded this as a 
mesalliance, and had not the bride’s father allowed the young 
couple two hundred pounds a year, they would have been 
reduced to actual poverty. This proved to be an unfortunate 
marriage for both. After the birth of two children, disagree¬ 
ments arose, and Shelley and his wife separated. Like all beau¬ 
tiful women in such circumstances, she was attacked by the 
restless tongue of slander; and unable to bear the taunts of the 
cruel world, she at last committed suicide by drowning, just 
four years from the date of her marriage. Shelley suffered 
inexpressible misery and misrepresentation on this account; 
and his family added to his affliction by obtaining from the 
Court of Chancery a decree depriving him of the custody of 
his children on the ground of Atheism. 

Shelley afterwards contracted a second marriage with the 
daughter of Godwin (the author of “Caleb Williams”), and 
Mary Wollstonecraft, who died in giving birth to Shelley’s 
wife; and for a time he made Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, his 
residence. It was there he wrote the “Revolt of Islam.” 
During his residence there he suffered severely from an attack 
of ophthalmia, which he had contracted in one of his charitable 
visits in the neighborhood. His attentions to the poor cottagers 
were indefatigable; and his life-long sacrifices to the sick and 
needy strikingly attests the sincerity of his poetical pleadings 
for the oppressed among the human race. De Quincey says, 
“Shelley would, from his earliest manhood, have sacrificed all 
that he possessed for any comprehensive purpose of good for 
the race of man. He dismissed all insults and injuries from 
his memory.” In the winter of 1814-15 Shelley attended a 
London hospital for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of 
surgery, that he might be of service to the poor; and this not¬ 
withstanding the delicate and precarious state of hjte own health. 

Upon the death of Sir Bysshe Shelley, Percy was secured an 
income of one thousand pounds per year. Henceforth he was 
placed beyond absolute want. But the most brilliant fortune 
would scarcely have sufficed for his lavish generosity; and he 
was sometimes reduced to the very verge of destitution. 

On Monday, July 8, 1822, while he was returning from Leg¬ 
horn in a schooner-rigged boat of his own, with one friend and 


SHELLEY. 


723 


an English servant., a storm suddenly rose, the boat instantly 
sank, and all on board were drowned. Eight days afterwards 
his body was washed ashore near Via Reggio, in an advanced 
state of decomposition. In his pockets were a copy of Sopho- 1 ' 
cles, and another of Keat’s last book, doubled back at the 
“Eve of St. Agnes,” as if hastily thrust away when the squall 
burst on the boat. Corpses thus cast ashore were, by the 
Tuscan law, ordered to be burned, as a precaution against 
plague. Shelley’s body was burned on a funeral pyre, in the 
presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, and several others. The 
ashes were coffered, and soon afterwards buried in the new 
Protestant Cemetery at Rome — a beautiful open space, covered 
in summer with violets and daisies — of which Shelley himself 
had said, “It might make one in love with death to think that 
one should be buried in so sweet a place.” Around the grave 
his friends planted six young cypresses and four laurels. A 
Latin epitaph by Leigh Hunt was inscribed on the tombstone, 
to which were added three of Shelley’s favorite lines from 
Shakspere’s “Tempest.” Thus perished the divine poet, “be¬ 
yond all others beloved,” in the twenty-ninth year of his age, 
ere the mid-day sun of life could dispel the clouds that had 
gathered around the morning of his career; and there at Rome, 
shadowed by cypress and laurel, covered with fairest flowers, 
and surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a dead empire, 
sleeps the sweetest singer that ever thrilled the hearts of men. 

As a poet, Shelley has been greatly and justly admired. His 
“Queen Mab ” is an especial favorite with Freethinkers. “Pro¬ 
metheus Unbound ” is regarded as his masterpiece. 

The critical Rossetti thus writes of this magnificent poem: 
“There is, I suppose, no poem comparable in the fair sense 
of that word, to ‘Prometheus Unbound.’ The immense scale 
and boundless scope of the conception; the marble majesty and 
extra-mundane passions of the personages; the sublimity of 
ethical aspiration ; the radiance of ideal and poetic beauty which 
saturates every phase of the subject, and almost (as it were) 
wraps it from sight at times, and transforms it out of sense 
into spirit ; the rolling river of great sound and lyrical rapture; 
form a combination not to be matched elsewhere, and scarcely 
to encounter competition. ‘ Prometheus Unbound ’ is the ideal 


724 


SHELLEY. 


poem of perpetual and triumphant progression—the Atlantis of 
Man Emancipated.” 

The recent claim that Shelley held any views inconsistent 
with the most absolute Atheism is utterly unwarranted. He 
had early graduated in the school of French eighteenth-century 
Materialism, and in liis Queen Mab clearly and unmistakably 
came out a full-fledged and positive Atheist. Trelawny one time 
asked him, “Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?” 
Shelley replied, “certainly not; how can I? AVe know noiliing; 
we have no evidence.” 

In politics Shelley was a republican, a thorough hater of 
tyranny, whether of priest or king, and a lover of liberty in 
every possible form. 

Concerning his disinterested devotion to others and his 
wholly unselfish nature, let Landor, who confesses himself to 
have been once strongly prejudiced against him, bear testi¬ 
mony: “Shelley, at the gates of Pisa, threw himself between 
Byron and a dragoon, whose sword in his indignation was 
lifted and about to strike. Byron told a common friend, some¬ 
time afterwards, that he could not conceive how any man living 
should act so. ‘ Do you know he might have been killed ? and 
there was every appearance that he would be!’ The answer 
was, ‘Between you and Shelley there is but little similarity, 
and perhaps but little sympathy; yet what Shelley did then he 
would do again, and always. There is not a human creature, 
not even the most hostile, that he would hesitate to protect 
from injury at the imminent hazard of his life/ ‘By heaven! 
I cannot understand it/ cried Byron; ‘a man to run upon a 
naked sword for another! ’ 

“ Innocent and careless as a boy, Shelley possessed all the 
delicate feelings of a gentleman, all the discrimination of a 
scholar, and united in just degrees the ardor of the poet with 
the patience and forbearance of the philosopher. His generos¬ 
ity and charity went far beyond those of any man, I believe, at 
present in existence. He was never known to speak evil of fin 
enemy, unless that enemy had done some grievous injustice to 
another; and he divided his income of only one thousand 
pounds with the fallen and afflicted. This is the man against 
whom much clamor has been raised by poor prejudiced fools. 


SHELLEY. 


725 


and by those who live and lap under their tables. This is the 
man whom, from one false story about his former wife, I had 
refused to visit at Pisa! I blush in anguish at my prejudice 
and injustice, and ought hardly to feel it as a blessing or a 
consolation, that I regret him less than I should have done if 
I had known him personally.” 

And this was the sensitive and loving poet, who was expelled 
from Oxford by its bigots and divines, was refused the custody 
of his children by that hoary old victim of prejudice and port, 
Chancellor Eldon, and who perished on the sea he loved to 
ride, when he had just emerged from the morn and pearly dew 
of youth. “Are you Shelley the Atheist?” asked a follower 
of the meek Nazarene as he knocked the poet down at a chance 
meeting upon the Continent. It was thus Christianity com¬ 
mended itself to the veneration and gratitude of humanity a 
generation or two ago. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was as pure, as disinterested, as noble 
an enthusiast for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, as 
ever lived. To redress human wrongs, to relieve human suffer¬ 
ing, to war with injustice and ignorance and falsehood in every 
form, to leave the world better than he found it, was the one 
object of Ills life of suffering and of song. It is as a high- 
minded reformer, as an unbending lover of truth, as an enthu¬ 
siastic friend of human improvement, that Shelley’s character 
stands in its fairest light. He sincerely sought to make a 
heaven of earth; and truly were none but such as he the 
earth’s inhabitants, a heaven here might be realized. 

And in this Centennial year, when a brighter morn seems 
breaking on the future; when vengeance seems departing from 
our laws, and love seems gradually creeping in; when the 
fierce voices of hatred which burst in Shelley’s time on the 
man bold enough to question the popular notions of Church 
and State orthodoxy are faintly heard; when there is a growing 
conviction that all the inhabitants of the earth, whatever may 
be their creed, their color, or their clime, should enjoy a fair 
portion of the gifts of God —it is not difficult to understand 
the growing interest in the life of him who, self-inspired and 
self-impelled, from his youth to the day of his death, shrank 
from no sacrifice in his devotion to the cause of human welfare. 


726 


FRANCES WRIGHT. 


FRANCES WEIGHT. 

The works and career of the subject of this notice afford 
abundant evidence that women are equally capable with men 
of becoming the world’s great teachers and reformers. Frances 
Wright ranks among the most talented and accomplished of 
female Freethinkers. Her life and writings tend to confirm the 
growing conviction of the age, that when females attain their 
true and independent position in society, there will be far less 
ignorance among women and more happiness among men. 

This remarkable woman was a native of Dundee, Scotland, 
where she was born on the sixth of September, 1795. Her father 
dying when she was but two years old, she was taken to Eng¬ 
land and reared as a ward of Chancery by a maternal aunt. 
She grew into young womanhood with a tall, erect and queenly 
figure, with large eyes, a magnificent head, and a face of rare 
beauty. The graces of her mind fully equaled those of her 
person. At quite an early age she gave evidence of remarkable 
intellectual ability. Impelled by a strong desire for knowledge, 
she diligently applied herself to the various branches of science, 
and the study of ancient and modern letters and the arts. 
Surrounded at all times by choice and extensive libraries, and 
commanding whatever masters she desired, her education was 
of a very superior kind. She was surprised, while yet a young 
girl, at the inability of her instructors to answer her questions. 
Being checked upon one occasion by a learned mathematician, 
who observed that her question was dangerous, she inquired: 
“Can Truth be dangerous?” “It is thought so,” replied the 
learned professor. She thus early learned that Tnth had still 
to be found, and that men were afraid of it. 

The attention of her early years was given to the sufferings 
of humanity, as well as to study. She was but fifteen when 
her sympathies and efforts were enlisted in behalf of the Eng¬ 
lish peasantry; and when she saw their ejectment, under vari¬ 
ous pretexts, from the estates of the wealthy proprietors, and 


FRANCES WRIGHT. 


727 


witnessed the painful labor of the aged among them, she asked: 
“Has man, then, no home upon the earth; and are age and 
infirmity of no care or consideration ?” Upon one occasion, 
after witnessing a case peculiarly distressing to her feelings, 
she made a solemn oath to wear ever in her heart the cause of 
the poor and the helpless, and to do all she could in redressing 
human wrongs. 

All acquainted with the life and labors of Frances Wright, 
know how well she fulfilled her engagement. At the age of 
nineteen she published her first work, “A Few Days in Athens.” 
Having read Bocca’s “History of the American Revolution,” 
she resolved to visit the United States, which appeared to her 
young imagination the land of freedom and hope. 

Her uncle expressed surprise at the preference she gave 
America over Italy and Greece, which he had recommended as 
more in unison with her early studies; in reply, she asked if a 
young country consecrated to freedom, was not worthier atten¬ 
tion than realms in ruins, inhabited by slaves? “The sight of 
Italy, dear uncle, prostrated under the leaden sceptre of Austria, 
would break my heart/* 

America was the cherished country of her young enthusiasm, 
and she determined to adopt it as her own; and after having 
familiarized herself with its government and institutions, she 
sailed for New York in 1818. She returned to England in 1820, 
and published a large volume, “Views of Society and Manners 
in America.” This work had an immense sale. It was trans¬ 
lated into nearly all the Continental languages, and became 
known to all the Reformers of Europe. The appearance of this 
book changed the tone of the British press, and revived 
throughout Europe old reminiscences of the country of Wash¬ 
ington and Franklin, and a ne»v ardor in the cause of civil and 
religious rights. General Lafayette read the book, and invited 
the fair young republican to Paris. She went thither in the 
spring of 1821. A true Liberal in all her views and hopes, she 
was highly ai^preciated by Lafayette and all the eminent Free¬ 
thinkers in France. 

In 1824 she returned to the United States, and immediately 
undertook a project for the abolition of slavery. She bought 
two thousand acres of land at Chickasaw Bluffs, Tennessee; 


728 


FRANCES WRIGHT. 


she then purchased a number of slave families, giving them 
their freedom, and removed them to the farm, residing there 
herself to direct their labor. After continuing this novel under¬ 
taking three years and a half, she was attacked by a severe 
sickness, which made it necessary to go to Europe for her 
recovery. 

While she was absent her enemies succeeded in frustrating 
her noble and philanthropic experiment. Through their influ¬ 
ence the farm became involved in difficulties, and finally the 
freedmen were sent off to Hayti at her expense. She had given 
much time and money for this worthy enterprise; and though, 
thanks to the efforts of Christian zealots'and slave-holders, the 
experiment proved a failure, still it strikingly served to show 
her strong sympathy and benevolence for an oppressed and 
degraded class of beings. 

Upon her return from Europe she assumed the proprietor¬ 
ship of the “Gazette” at New Harmony, Ind., previously pub¬ 
lished under the direction of Robert Dale Owen. In 1828 , leav¬ 
ing the paper in charge of Mr. Owen, she made a lecturing 
tour through the Stites. Probably no speaker ever met with 
more furious opposition. She had become generally known 
through her paper, which had announced her views as ex¬ 
tremely radical and “anti-theological.” This was sufficient to 
expose her to the most bitter rancor of religious bigotry. 

At a theater in Baltimore she was threatened with the 
destruction of her life if she attempted to speak; but all the 
myrmidons of the church could not ruffle the composure of this 
eloquent and fearless female. She calmly replied, that she 
thought she knew the American people, and for every riotous 
fanatic that might annoy her, a hundred good citizens would 
protect her, and she was not afraid to place herself in their 
hands. And she judged rightly; for she rose and lectured with¬ 
out disturbance to an admiring audience that crammed the the¬ 
ater from p ; t to ceiling. In other cities, however, she was not 
so fortunate; riotous disturbances wore of frequent occurrence, 
while the pious press throughout the country sought by inflam- 
atory leaders to incite the prejudices and passions of the public 
against her. 

This was in the year 1828 . The standard of the “Christian 


PRANCES WRIGHT. 


729 


Party in Politics” had been openly unfurled. This party had 
been long secretly at work, and Frances Wright resolved to 
expose its undertakings in all sections of the Republic. She had 
discovered an evident attempt of the clergy to effect a union 
of Church and State, and with it, a lasting union of Bank and 
State, and thus subvert the independence and free institutions 
of the country. Clearly discerning the significance of this 
move, she determined to rouse the American people to meet it, 
at whatever cost to herself. And so she, a young woman, 
raised in the circles of European aristocracy, and whose habits 
were those of a quiet observer of men and things, with confi¬ 
dence in the cause she advocated, and armed only with the 
sacred character of her sex, went through the States, encoun¬ 
tering the mixed multitudes that crowded the open theaters to 
hear her, everywhere denouncing the prevalent political and 
financial corruption, and exposing the gradual' aggressions of 
'Clerical and sectarian wealth and power. 

Her tall and majestic figure, the deep and almost solemn 
expression of her eyes, the simple contour of her finely formed 
head, unadorned except by its own natural ringlets, her garment 
of plain, white muslin, which hung around her in folds that re¬ 
called the drapery of a Grecian statue —all contributed to pro- 
duce an effect unlike anything I had ever seen before, or ever- 
expect to see again.” 

About 1838 she was married to a French gentleman, named 
D’Arusmont. 

Sh^ died suddenly in Cincinnati, on Tuesda} r , December 14, 
1852, aged fifty-seven years. The previous winter she fell upon, 
the ice and broke her thigh. This probably hastened her 
decease, though the immediate cause of her death -was the rup¬ 
ture of a blood-vessel. She was aware of her situation, knew 
When she was dying, and met her last hour with perfect com¬ 
posure. One child, a daughter, survived her. Thus closed the 
career of a woman whose name has become a household word 
among all lovers of the liberty of the human mind, a name 
which will ever be held in grateful regard by every lover of 
Freethought. From girlhood her life was devoted to the sole 
purpose of advancing knowledge, and the w^orld to-day is enjoy¬ 
ing the blessings which her labor did so much to win. 


730 


CHAltLES LYELL. 


CHARLES LYELL. 


This eminent British geologist, a son of a Scottish botanist, 
was born at Kinnordy, in Forfarshire, in November, 1797. In 
1821 he graduated at Exeter College, Oxford, and then studied 
law; but soon left that profession in order to devote himself 
exclusively to liis favorite study — that of geology, his private 
means enabling him to do so. In 1832 he was appointed pro¬ 
fessor of geology at King’s College, London; but this appoint¬ 
ment he soon afterwards resigned. From the commencement 
of the publication of the Geological Society’s “Transactions” 
(1826) he was a regular and valuable contributor. The papers 
which he contributed displayed very superior powers of obser¬ 
vation and comparison. In 1830 appeared the first volume of 
his important work, “Prin.iples af Geology.” This was com¬ 
pleted in 1834, passed through many editions, and attracted the 
attention of the whole geological world. It reached the fifth 
edition as early as 1837. He afterwards divided the work into 
two parts, one of which was published under the title of 
“Elements of Geology” (1838). In a subsequent edition the 
name was changed to “Manual of Elementary Geology.” These 
two works have exercised the most marked influence upon 
geological inquiry since the date of their first publication. 
They contributed, far more than anything else which had ever 
appeared, to the placing of geology on a philosophical basis as 
an inductive science. 

Having visited the United States in 1841, he lectured on geol¬ 
ogy at Boston, and after his return published “Travels in North 
America, with Geological Observations on the United States, 
Canada, and Nova Scotia,” (2 vols., 1845.'. He also wrote many 
treatises on the geology of America, which were printed in the 
“Transactions” of the Geological Society, and in other jour¬ 
nals. In 1845 he made another excursion to the United States, 
the result of which was his publication of a “Second Yisit to 


CHARLES LYELL. 


731 


the United States,” (2 vols., 1849'. Both of these books of 
travel contain much to interest the general reader. 

He also traveled over the Continent of Europe; and described 
its geographical facts in the “Transactions” of the Geological 
Society, in reports to the British Associaton, and in English 
and American scientific journals. His great services to the 
cause of geological science obtained for him, in 1848, the honor 
of knighthood. He was elected President of the Geological 
Society in 1836, and again in 1850. In 1855 his University con¬ 
ferred upon him the title of D. C. L. 

In 1863 he published “The Geological Evidences of the 
Antiquity of Man, with Bemarks on Theories of the Origin of 
Species by Variation.” He was formerly prominent among the 
opponents of the Darwinian theory of development; but latterly, 
after a conscientious and prolonged investigation, he changed 
his views in that respect. He died in 1875. 

Sir Charles Lyell, in his geological works, shows that no 
great catastrophes and cataclysms in the far-off geologic ages 
were needed to produce any of the changes which the crust of 
the earth has undergone, from the azoic rocks up to the soil 
under our feet: but that the ordinary and secular causes that 
are quietly at work to-day could, and most probably did pro¬ 
duce them all. Thus, the cataclysmal as well as the miracu¬ 
lous element of spasmodic wonder was done away with, and 
the philosophic contemplation of stupendous effects gradually 
brought out within “the patient cycles of eternal time” was 
scientifically and beneficently substituted. God and Spasm and 
Caprice in Geology have been utterly annihilated by Lyell. 
He actually created a New Earth-World, and deputed its care 
to Matter and Time and Law —the ever-producing factors of 
all the phenomena of Geology. He played a conspicuous part 
in exposing the fallacies taught in the book of Genesis, and 
showed conclusively the utter absurdity of that story of crea¬ 
tion, both as to the age of the world and the order of its com¬ 
ing into existe; ce. It is impossible to believe Lyell and Moses 
at the same time. 


73a 


JUSSIEU. 


JUSSIEU. 

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, the celebrated discoverer of 
the “Natural System of Botany,” was born at Lyons, France, 
in April, 1748. He was the most eminent member of a family 
which has been called “the Botanical Dynasty.” The others 
were the Brothers Antoine, Bernard, and Joseph, born respec¬ 
tively in 1686, 16 r J9, and 1704, and all, in their time, filling imiior- 
tant botanical positions, public and governmental. These three 
brothers were Antoine Laurent’s uncles. Bernard was the first 
to conceive the idea of the classification of plants according to 
their affinities. His method was perfected by his famous 
nephew. The uncle, whose advanced age and dimness of sight 
indisposed him to the labors of authorship, freely communi¬ 
cated his mature reflections to young Jussieu, who zealously 
enlisted in the important enterprise. 

After graduating, getting promoted, and publishing his excel¬ 
lent monograph on “ Banunculacese.” he met with the highest 
recognition when in 1774 the arrangement of the plants in the 
Boyal Garden, which was conformed to the system of Tourne- 
fort, was exchanged for one proposed by him (Jussieu,) founded 
on natural affinities. While performing his duties as professor, 
he continued to digest and perfect his new system, until 1788, 
when he developed the same in his great Latin work, “Genera 
Plantarum secundum Ordines naturales disposita,” “which,” 
says Cuvier, “forms in the sciences of observation an epoch 
perhaps as important as the ‘Chemistry’ of Lavoisier in the 
sciences of experiment.” His philosophical system has gradu¬ 
ally prevailed and superseded the artificial method of Linnseus. 

He subsequently filled many important scientific posts, and 
continued to dictate valuable memoirs on botany, characterized 
by the same merits as his principal work,—profound know¬ 
ledge, patient observation, a correct estimate of the value of 
characters, and an admirable sagacity in perceiving affinities. 
He died in 1836, at the advanced age of 88 years, 


GERRIT SMITH. 


733 


G ERR IT SMITH. 

This distinguished reformer and philanthropist was born at 
Utica, New York, in 1797. At an early age he entered Hamilton 
College, Clinton, New York, from which lie graduated with 
great honor. He adopted the law for his profession, at tlio 
practice of which he was eminently successful. He became 
especially celebrated as an advocate, and his name is connected 
with some of the most important cases in the history of the 
New York bar. 

Upon the death of his father, he inherited one of the largest 
landed estates in the country, nearly two hundred thousand 
acres of which he distributed among the poor and homeless, 
without distinction of creed or color. 

He was early identified with the movement for "the abolition 
of American slavery, and became one of the most prominent 
and active leaders. He was present at the meeting of the State 
Abolition Society at Utica in 1835. Upon i s being broken up 
by a mob, he came fearlessly forward and invited them to his 
own house at Peterboro, and fed them, and from that time led 
them. He was one of the founders of the Liberty Party, and 
in 1852 he became the candidate of that party for United 
States President, with Samuel B. Ward, the popular colored 
orator, for Vice-President. He was afterwards elected to Con¬ 
gress. 

When the Anti-Slavery Society was unable to hold its Anni¬ 
versary in New York City on account of mob violence, he 
arranged for a meeting of the Society at Syracuse, where he 
welcomed its members in a speech, in which, after paying the 
highest encomiums to Garrison, he specially eulogized and 
welcomed the great English Abolitionist, George Thompson, 
whom Lord Brougham pronounced the most eloquent man in 
England. From being a Presbyterian church member he be¬ 
came successively Liberal, Unitarian, and finally a pronounced 
Infidel. Defending Universalism upon one occasion, he said* 


734 


G EUR IT SMITH. 


‘‘Nobody can believe in eternal hell — the world would be fro¬ 
zen with horror.” Though Mr. Smith was a decided disbeliever 
in the divinity of the Bible, and in all the dogmas of Chris¬ 
tianity, he was in the practice of observing a beautiful sort of 
family worship, generally repeating one of his favorite Psalms 
and a brief prayer. A number of years previous to his death 
he published a series of radical discourses delivered by him at 
Peterboro. These sermons on “The Religion of Reason,” were 
a direct and damaging attack upon the inspiration and authen¬ 
ticity of the Christian Scr'ptures, and thereby exposed him to 
much pious censure. These sermons first appeared in the 
“New York Tribune,” he paying one dollar per line for their 
publication in the advertising columns. 

He was also a prominent leader in the temperance reform, 
being a powerful advocate of prohibitory political action. One 
of his‘favorite mottoes was, “Keep Government within its 
limits.” He died while on a visit to his nephew, in New York, 
December 27, 1874. His remains were taken to Peterboro, agree¬ 
ably to his dying request, and interred with unostentatious, but 
impressive funeral obsequies. 

By his death the Empire State lost one of its most honored 
and distinguished citizens, an accomplished scholar and distin¬ 
guished jurist, a man who achieved a world-wide reputation as 
a reformer, a philanthropist, a statesman, and an orator. He 
was a firm and consistent unbeliever in revelation, and was bit¬ 
terly denounced by the superstitious for his Infidelity; still it 
is a Well-known fact that his life-labors were rather directed 
towards the maintenance of great philanthropic and reforma¬ 
tory movements than in the destruction of religious systems. 


MICHELET. 


735 


MICHELET. 


This eminent French historian was born in Paris in 1798. 
Haying cleyoted himself with brilliant success to historical 
studies, he became a public teacher, and, after a sharp compe¬ 
tition, "was called, in 1821, to a chair in the College Sainte- 
Barbe, where he taught the ancient languages and philosophy 
until 1826. In 1826 he was appointed teacher of history and 
languages at the College Rollin. He commenced his literary 
career by the composition of several elementary works on the 
study of history, which obtained considerable popularity, at¬ 
tracting the attention of the government towards him as a 
writer of research. Shortly after the revolution of 1830 he was 
appointed chief of the historical section of the archives of the 
realm; and about 1832 M. Guizot, unable, on account of his polit¬ 
ical duties, to continue his lectures on history to the Faculty of 
Literature in' Paris, named M. Michelet as his substitute. In 
1831 he published ‘‘Roman History: The Republic,” and in 1833 
the first volume of “History of France.” In 1838 he succeeded 
M. Dumon in the chair of History in the College of France, 
and was elected member of the Institute. In 1815-6 great atten¬ 
tion was directed towards two works of his, under the titles, 
“The People;” and “Priests, Women, and Families.” In 
consequence of the attacks made in these works upon the 
ecclesiastical party, Guizot, the prime minister, interdicted his 
lectures. 

In 1847, he commenced his “History of the French Revolu¬ 
tion;” upon which, and the “History of France,” he was 
mostly engaged during the latter period of his life. Mr. 
Michelet’s style as a historian is marked by great vehemence 
and pictorial power. He was of a very poetical turn of mind, 
and is strongly given to generalize. His more recent works are 
“The Bird,” “The Insect,” “The Sorcerer,” and his famous 
“Love” and “Woman,” all of which are marked by exquisite 
beauty of style, grace of imagination, and suggestiveness of 


73G 


MICHELET. 


sentiment. The two latter have been translated into English, 
and often reprinted. In these beautiful works Michelet seems to 
have struck the right path of research and contemplation in 
reference to the grand passion and lovely woman. He bases 
his remarks on the evident and eternal differences —physiolog¬ 
ical and psychological, between the sexes. Eliza Earnham, in 
this country, wrote a book attempting to show the superiority 
of woman to man, mostly basing her conclusions on false 
premises deduced from an unscientific comparison between 
certain active organs in woman and their non-active cr rudi¬ 
mentary counterparts in man. According, however, to the now 
accepted doctrine as regards such rudimentary organs, Mrs. 
Farnham’s facts would seem to point unmistakably the other 
way, namely, to the superiority of man over woman. Michelet 
makes woman, on account of her catamenial function, and all 
' that that implies, always an invalid, and therefore naturally 
looking up to and feeling dependent on man as protector and 
provider, and having her “desire” to him as lover or husband. 
And it really seems that this is the true doctrine, and that after 
the “woman’s rights” question from a mere metaphysical and 
political standpoint shall have been finally settled in favor of 
woman, then the sexes, in perfect equality before the law, will 
gradually find their respective natural spheres, and those 
spheres will be mainly determined by purely physiological 
considerations. 

But it was as an adversary of the Jesuits and of Bomanism 
that Michelet mostly distinguished himself. As late as 1864 he 
published “The Bible of Humanity,” which distinctly exhibits 
his cosmopolitanism in religion as well as on most other 
subjects. This excellent work is on the eve of appearing in 
English dress, and it may confidently be said that no Free¬ 
thinker can well afford to be without it. 

Michelet, especially in his later works, has, in his own 
peculiar way, “ fought the good fight ” of Liberalism, and was 
a Sage and Thinker of no mean order. He died February 10, 1874. 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 


737 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 

The founder of the “Positive Philosophy” and its resulting 
"Polity” and “Religion of Humanity” was born at Montpel¬ 
lier, France, in January, 1798. His father was a tax-treasurer. 
He entered the Polytechnic School in 1814, and gave much 
attention to mathematics and the physical sciences. About 1818 
he became a disciple and coadjutor of Saint-Simon, and joined 
the band of brilliant disciples which the genius and ambition 
of that distinguished social reformer gathered around him. 
His connection with Saint-Simon continued about six years, and 
they separated in 1824, mutually disgusted and completely 
estranged. Before 1824 he had discovered his law of Social 
Evolution. In 1825 Saint-Simon died, and Comte deserted the 
Saint-Simonian School, to found one of his own; and during 
the next twenty years devoted himself to the elaboration of an 
original system of scientific philosophy, which was developed 
in his “Course of Positive Philosophy,” (6 vols., 1830-42) a work 
which, according to all critics, exhibits intellectual powers of a 
very high order. During the production of this course he led a 
quiet, scientific life, as professor of mathematics in the Poly¬ 
technic School of Paris. His new system of philosophy soon 
attracted great attention, and was adopted by numerous disci¬ 
ples. 

Comte had married in 1825; but, on account of an irrepressi¬ 
ble incompatibility, the union proved to be unhappy. About 
1842 he was finally separated from his wife, and two years later 
he formed a “passionate friendship” with Clotilde ae Vaux, of 
whom he speaks as “having inspired him with a happiness of 
which he had always dreamed, but which he had never hitherto 
experienced.” His pure and elevated relation to this accom¬ 
plished and spiriluelle lady was the immediate cause of the 
grand provision in his philosophy for the religious element in 
man, which provision he made by projecting the new cultus of 
“ The Religion of Humanity.” 


738 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 


Besides his “Positive Philosophy,” Comte's most important 
other works are his “System of Positive Polity, or a Treatise 
on Sociology, instituting The Religion of Humanity,” (4 vols., 
1851-4) and his “Catechism of Positivism, or a Summary Ex¬ 
position of the Universal Religion,” (1852). “The General View 
of Positivism,” being the Introduction to the “Polity,” was 
published by him separately,. and has been translated into 
English by Dr. Bridges. The “Subjective Synthesis,” “Appeal 
to Conservatives,” and the Treatises on Geometry and Astron¬ 
omy are minor works, but of great importance as elucidating 
several points in his System. A condensed translation of the 
“ Positive Philosophy ” was published by Miss Martineau; and 
the “Polity” is now being translated by several of his English 
disciples. Comte died in Paris in September, 1857. 

Professor Lewes, in his “Biographical History of Philoso¬ 
phy,” thus writes of Comte’s “Positive Philosophy:” — 

“In the present state of things the speculative domain is 
composed of two very different portions, — general ideas and 
positive sciences. The general ideas are powerless because they 
are not positive, the positive sciences are powerless because they 
are not general. The new Philosophy which, under the title of 
Positive, M. Comte proposes to create —and the basis of which 
he has himself laid — is destined to put an end to this anarchy, 
by presenting a doctrine which is positive , because elaborated 
from the sciences, and yet possessing all the desired generality 
of metaphysical doctrines, without possessing their vagueness, 
instability, and inapplicability. 

“Besides this general aim of the new ‘Great Instauration,' 
we have to notice three initial conceptions which Comte ad¬ 
vances, two of which relate to Method, and one to History. 

“The first is the conception of Philosophy, which, in its 
widest sense, is identical with Science; consequently one Method 
must be followed in all investigations, whether the investiga¬ 
tions relate to Physics, to Psychology, to Ethics, or to Politics. 
Every special science, no matter what its subject-matter, is but 
a branch of the one Positive Philosophy. 

“The second conception is that of Classification, whereby all 
the special sciences will assume their proper place in the 
hierarchy of Science, the simpler being studied first, an$d thus 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 


739 


becoming instruments for the better prosecution of those which 
succeed. Thus Mathematics becomes the instrument of Astron¬ 
omy and Physics; Chemistry becomes the instrument of Biology; 
and Biology becomes the instrument of Sociology. 

“The third conception is that of the fundamental law of 
evolution. This conception sets forth that Humanity has three 
stages, the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. 
Whether we examine the history of nations, of individuals, or 
of special sciences, we And that speculation always commences 
with supernatural explanations, advances to metaphysical ex¬ 
planations, and finally reposes in positive explanations. . . . 

“ In the Theological stage, the mind regards all effects as 
the productions of supernatural agents, whose intervention is 
the cause of all the apparent anomalies and irregularities. 
Nature is animated by supernatural beings. Every unusual 
phenomenon is a sign of the pleasure or displeasure of some 
being adored and propitiated as a God. The lowest condition 
of this stage is that of the savages, viz., Fetishism. The high¬ 
est condition is where one being is substituted for many, as 
the cause of all phenomena. 

“In the Metaphysical [Transcendental] stage, which is only 
a modification of the former, but which is important as a tran¬ 
sitional stage, the supernatural agents give place to abstract 
forces (personified abstractions) supposed to inhere in the var¬ 
ious substances, and capable themselves of engendering pheno¬ 
mena. The highest condition of this stage is where all these 
forces are brought under one general force named Nature. 

“In the Positive stage, the mind, convinced of the futility 
Of all inquiring into causes [efficient or final] and essences, 
applies itself to the observation and classification of laws which 
regulate effects; that is to say, the invariable relations of suc¬ 
cession and similitude which all things bear to each other. The 
highest condition of this stage would be, to be able to repre¬ 
sent all phenomena as the various particulars of one general 
view. 

“ The Positive Philosophy, therefore, resolves itself into five 
fundamental sciences, [see above,] of which the succession is 
determined by a necessary and invariable subordination found¬ 
ed on a comparison of coresponding phenomena. The first 



740 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 


(Astronomy) considers the most general, simple, and abstract 
phenomena — those farthest removed from humanity: they influ¬ 
ence all others, but are not influenced by them. The last 
(Sociology) considers the most particular, complex, and concrete 
phenomena—those most directly interesting to man: they de¬ 
pend more or less upon all the preceding classes, without exer¬ 
cising on the latter the slightest influence. Between these two 
extremes the degrees of speciality and of complication of phe¬ 
nomena gradually augment according to their successive inde¬ 
pendence. 

“ The foundation of a comprehensive Method is the great achieve¬ 
ment of Comte , as it was of Bacon.” 

Positive Philosophy is the philosophy of the Knowable, as 
distinguished from Theology, which is the Philosophy of Myths, 
and from Metaphysics, which is that of “ Entities ” — both the 
Myths and the Entities being really unknowable to man. 

The Positive Polity is a Polity based neither on the nature 
or injunctions of a Myth or Myths, direct or indirect, nor yet 
on metaphysical abstractions cr “ glittering generalities ” about 
“liberty,” “equality,” “rights,” etc., etc.; but upon positive 
knowledge (ever growing) of the relations of human beings to 
things and to each other. 

The “Religion of Humanity” is the flower and fruit of the 
“Polity.” It is simply the devotional and practical direction of 
the highest emotions of man to the Highest Known Being, which 
Being the “Positive Philosophy” has amply proved to be none 
Other than the Highest Qrganized Being, to wit: Humanity, 
which, in Mr. Mill’s word>^“ ascends into the unknown recesses 
of the Past, embraces the manifold Present, and descends into 
the indefinite and unforeseeable Future, forming a Collective 
Existence without assignable beginning or end, appealing to 
that feeling of the Infinite, which is deeply rooted in human 
nature, and which seems necessary to the imposingness of all 
our highest conceptions.” This new direction of the religious 
emotions and life (with more or less, or even no rites or cere¬ 
monies) means that 

“Diis extinctis, Deoque, successit Humanitas.” 

“ The gods being extinct, also God, Humanity has succeeded ” 
them in the hearts and minds of the Religious Positivist, who 


AUGUSTE COMTE. 


741 

Sit 

nevermore has any love or life to bestow on said gods or God, 
or on metaphysical “entities,” or yet on “the cold and careless 
Cosmos” or “Nature,” “which acts with such fearful uni¬ 
formity; stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; 
too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable 
to propitiate; having no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, 
no arm to save.” The Positivist sees, and loves, and worships 
positive goodness and moral greatness only in the Human Race 
and some of the superior animals, which latter he boldly incor¬ 
porates with Humanity. Outside of this all is, relatively to us , 
but “brute indifferent force,” not worthy of human love or 
hatred, and much less of worship, because, as far as we can 
see, beneath them all, as being very lowly organized, or not 
organized at all. Those men and women who have done and 
are doing Humanity great and grand service, are the saints of 
the New Religion, and the Higher Providence of the Race. 
All, however, who do willing service to the Race, are true mem¬ 
bers of Humanity. But the mere worthless or cynical destruc¬ 
tives—(the wild beasts and vermin of the Race) —no matter 
what their position in society may be, will either utterly die 
out of its contemplation, or be held in everlasting contempt. 

Auguste Comte condensed all human morality into the sub¬ 
lime rule, “Live for others,” and coined a new word — altruism 
— (otherishness as against selfishness — to express this noble sen¬ 
timent. All the best previous rules, to wit: the negative and 
affirmative “Golden Rules,” or “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” 
or “Do all for the love of God,” do not by any means com¬ 
press egoism, but rather implicitly sanction it. Positivism alone 
holds at once both a noble and true language when it urges us 
to live for others. Among its other great mottoes are the fol¬ 
lowing : 

“Act from affection, and think in order to act.” 

“The Intellect should always be the servant of the Heart, 
but never its slave.” 

“ Family —Country —Humanity.” 

“The materials are disorder—with it we must organize 
order.” 

“Reorganization without God or king, by the systematic cub 
tus of Humanity.” 


U2 


JOSIAH WARREN. 


JOSIAH WARREN. 

Among the honored names of those to whom the world 
should acknowledge a debt of gratitude, is that of Josiah War- 
ben. He was a man of recognized eminent ability, and one of 
America’s staunchest supporters of true social science and the 
doctrine of fundamental human rights. He was born at Brook¬ 
line, Mass., June 26, 1798. Early in life he went to the West, 
and united himself with Robert Owen in his communal enter¬ 
prise at New Harmony. The failure of this great social experi¬ 
ment determined Mr. Warren to develop an idea the very oppo¬ 
site of Owen’s — that of Individuality. That was thenceforth 
his life’s mission. The details of his life are scanty and trivial, 
and this brief biographical notice would scarcely afford an 
occasion to enumerate his literary and reform labors. He is 
known to the world as the discoverer, formulator, and pro¬ 
pounder of the Sovereignty of the Individual and the principle 
of cost, the limit of price, as his contribution to the requisite 
solutions of social science; and concentrated in these doctrines 
were all the life and masterly power of the man. 

In person, Mr. Warren was rather short and thick-set, homely- 
featured, plain, sombre, and a very common-place looking indi¬ 
vidual. But under his rough exterior was a heart as tender as 
a woman’s, and as pure, and simple, and loving ns a child’s. 
He was a great lover of music, and his eyes have been known 
to frequently brim and overflow at the effects of some pathetic 
piece. He was generally of a quite genial disposition, and 
sometimes playful, but at times terribly severe and caustic. 
His style of expression was remarkable for its terseness. This 
aphorism of his affords an illustration: “You can’t make a 
general rule of anything, not even of that .” 

The following reminiscence has been furnished for insertion 
here by one of his distinguished associates in the cause of 
reform. It shows the shrewd and unexpected simplicity with 
which he could overwhelm an antagonist. “At one of his public 


JOSIAH WARREN. 


743 


meetings in Boston, many years ago, he had been stating the 
small amount of industry it would require of every individual 
to supply his own wants, in a well-regulated society. Many 
objections had been raised and hit on the head, one after the 
other, as fast as they came up, by his expert answers, when a 
dignified person arose in the midst of the audience, evidently 
heavily-freighted with the conscious importance of his new 
objection, which proved to be this: He said he was entirely 
and decidedly opposed to any such state of society as Mr. War¬ 
'll had sketched, because in such a state of things people 
wou.d leave off work and spend their time in all sorts of idle¬ 
ness. Mr. Warren quietly inquired of the speaker, and with 
some seeming surprise, “Why would the people leave off work¬ 
ing ?” “Because,” said the other, with an air of triumph, 
“in such a society there would be no use in working.” “Well,” 
said Mr. Warren, with an inimitable simplicity of manner, “if 
there would be no use in working, what woidd be the use of it ?” 
The look of blank confusion on the objector’s face for a 
moment, the sudden plumping down into his seat, the storm of 
laughter and applause which burst out the moment after, made 
a scene such as rarely occurs in the presence of the best hu¬ 
morists.” 

For forty years Josiah Warren untiringly labored in the 
cause of an unpopular reform; and though the intrinsic merits 
of the man and his work passed unrecognized in his genera¬ 
tion, the future will give him his proper place in the history of 
social evolution, and the whitest marble for his monument. 

From having been a radical Atheistical Materialist, he be¬ 
came a rejoicing believer in the realities of spirit li e, in his 
latter years. The prospect of death was a source of intense 
pleasure to him, as he neared the event. He died at Boston, 
on Tuesday, April 14, 1873, aged seventy-five. And thus pass¬ 
ed away one of the great and good men of the world. 


744 


HEINRICH HEINE, 


HEINRICH HEINE. 

The ancestors of Heinrich Heine belonged to the Jewish 
religion, but he was never proud of his des> ent. His father 
was a merchant. Heinrich was born at Diisseldorf, Prussia, on 
the first of January, 1800. Being intended to follow his father’s 
commercial calling, he was sent to the commercial school at 
Hamburg in 1816. He remained there for three years, all the 
time importuning his father and friends to forego their inten¬ 
tion of making him a merchant, and to permit him to follow 
a literary life. At last his prayers prevailed and he was per¬ 
mitted to enter himself as a student at Bonn. He removed to 
Gottingen in 1820, and the next year he became a resident of 
Berlin. He here published his first collections of poems “Ged- 
ichte, Yon Heinrich Heine.” Many of these had been written 
as early as his seventeenth year, and had been already pub¬ 
lished in the Hamburg periodicals. He passed the year 1822 
traveling in Poland, a full account of which was published 
upon his return. The next year appeared liis famous one-act 
tragedy “Almansa,” and ‘‘Lyrisches Intermezzo.” He also 
published his “Letters from Berlin,” which attracted great 
attention among the learned in Europe. Returning to Gottingen 
in 1823, and taking his degree in law, he proceeded to Hamburg 
and began the practice of an advocate. But finding the legal 
profession as little suited to his tastes as the pursuit of com¬ 
merce, he soon relinquished it. He also, about this period, relin¬ 
quished the Jewish religion, and declared himself a Lutheran. 
This was the first step in that development of opinion which 
eventuated in total skepticism and the discarding of all super¬ 
stition. In 1826 he issued an account of his observations in the 
Hartz Mountains. This was soon succeeded by records of 
journeys in Italy, South Germany, and the islands of the Baltic. 
These were all translated into French, and obtained an exten¬ 
sive circulation. But Heine was a child of song; and in 1827 he 
returned to poetry, the first love of his younger days. His 


HEINRICH HEINE. 


745 


“Bucli der Lieber ” and “Atta Troll” were published at Ham¬ 
burg during the year. He was, at this time, not only an editor 
of a political paper at Stuttgart, but a contributor for two other 
journals. He went to Paris in 1831, where he resided the re¬ 
mainder of his life. He there published his work “On Nobil¬ 
ity” the same year; and in 1833 another “On the Modern 
Literature of Germany.” A stroke of paralysis in 1847 deprived 
him of the sight of one eye. The next year he lost the sight 
of the other. Pie never afterwards left his chamber, but con¬ 
tinued his literary labors with the aid of an amanuensis. His 
bodily sufferings were extremely severe, but lie submitted to 
them with a cheerful resignation. He even wrote poetry after 
he became paralyzed and blind. “The Book of Lazurus,” “The 
New Spring,” and “The Romancero,” were written during the 
last painful years of his life. All through his long sufferings 
he was dutifully cared for by his wife, a French Catholic lady 
whom he had married in 1840. He died February 17, 1856. 

Heine was an elegant and original writer, and his poems are 
remarkably fresh in feeling, full of the finest fancy, and of 
great beauty of versification. He was a large contributor to 
French as well as to German periodicals, and possessed the 
accomplishment, so rare in a German, of writing French with 
as much facility as his native tongue. His prose writings are 
marked by rare brilliancy of style and vividness of imagination. 
He possessed an extraordinary mastery of language and skill as 
a versifier; and his seemed to be the gift of turning into song 
every object that struck his senses, and that in so vivid and 
natural a manner that there is scarcely anything outside of 
Shakspere that compares with it. 

Speaking of his religion, Heine says: “My Berlin enemies 
always reproached me with a want of religion. I rather felt 
humiliated for passing for a purely human creature —I whom 
the philosophy of Hegel led to suppose that I was a God. How 
proud I then was of my divinity! What an idea I had of my 
grandeur! Alas! that charming time has long passed away, 
and I cannot think of it without sadness now that I am lying 
stretched upon my back, while my disease is making terrible 
progress.” 


746 


HARRIET MARTINEAU. 


HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

This eminent English authoress was the descendant of a 
French Huguenot family, born in 1802, at Norwich, Eng., where 
for several generations her ancestors had carried on the business 
of silk manufacture. Her father becoming embarrassed in his 
commercial affairs, and dying in limited circumstances, she, the 
sixth of eight children, resolved to support herself by litera¬ 
ture. She commenced, accordingly, by publishing, in the year 
1828, a volume of “Devotions for Young People,” which was 
succeeded by her “Christmas Day,” and “The Friend,” in the 
two following years. 

Great pains had been taken with her early education, which 
was received at home, and was solid and practical. At an 
early age she had evinced a talent for literary composition, 
which at first was pursued merely as an amusement. But her 
early assiduity in literary pursuits was extraordinary, and bore 
early and precocious fruits. At first her employment as a wri¬ 
ter was discouragingly unproductive, and the young authoress, 
much to her honor, eked out the slender re urns brought her 
by her pen by the more prosaic and remunerative work of the 
needle. She was brought up in the tenets of the Unitarians, 
with which body she identified herself until a mature age. 

During the years 1826 and 1827 she published four tales — 
“The Bioters,” “Principle and Practice,” “The Turn Out,” and 
“Mary Campbell.” These were written chiefly to illustrate the 
stirring incidents and the social and political controversies of 
the day. In 1830 she published her “Traditions of Palestine,” 
a work of mingled topography, history, and imagination — delin¬ 
eating Judea in the time of Christ. 

In 1835 Miss Marlineau visited America, and on her return 
in 1837 she published “Society in America.” In 1839 she appear¬ 
ed again as a novel writer. Her “Hour and the Man,” issued 
this year, presents a perfect portraiture of Toussaint L’Ouver- 
ture, the black patriot of Hayti, and a sublime denunciation of 


HARRIET MARTINEAU. 


747 


slavery. “Dealnock,” published tlie same year, is considered 
the most beautiful picture of English country life that ever 
appeared in print. Her series called “The Playfel ow,” pub¬ 
lished about this time, places her in the very first rank as a 
writer for the young:. 

From 1839 to 1844 she was a confirmed invalid. At this time 
she resided at Tynemouth, and notwithstanding her prostration 
on a bed of severe sickness, she could not entirely give up her 
literary labors. She published a series of essays, entitled “Life 
in the Sick Room.” Being restored to partial health by mes¬ 
meric agency, she resumed her pen with redoubled vigor. Her 
next production w;.s “Forest and Game Law Tales.” in three 
volumes. She also published a number of novelettes in Charles 
Knight's “ Weekly Volumes.” In 1846 she went to Syria and 
the Holy Land, and upon her return published a work entitled 
“Eastern Life, Past and Present.” Shortly after this sho 
formed an engagement with Charles Knight to carry on the 
“History of England,” which he had commenced himself. This 
is considered a work of extreme value. She astonished the 
world in her next publication by avowing herself an absolute 
skeptic. She published, shortly after, a popular summary of 
the “Philosophy of Comte.” She completely concurred in the 
opinions of that great destroyer of religion and founder of the 
science of modern society. She also became a large contributor 
to the “Westminster” and several Quarterlies, besides frequently 
furnishing political articles for the popular periodicals. It is 
now known that she was the writer of those warm and loyal 
articles which appeared in the English prints on behalf of the 
Union and in detestation of slavery during our great rebellion. 
During her last years she resided in a pretty little cottage, 
built by herself, amongst the Qumberland lakes. Although she 
was quite bed-ridden, and a great martyr to physical suffering, 
her literary activity remained the same as in her younger and 
healthier days. Her death occurred in June, 1876. 


748 


GEORGE SAND. 


GEORGE SiAND. 

Victor Hugo’s funeral oration, which was read at the grave 
of George Sand, contained the following passage: “She is the 
one great woman in this century whose mission was to finish 
the French Revolution and commence the revolution of human¬ 
ity. Equality of the sexes being a branch of the equality of 
men, a great woman was necessary. It was for a woman to 
prove that her mind might possess all gifts without losing a 
particle of her angelic nature, might be at once strong and 
gentle. George Sand was that woman. Happy is it that some 
one does honor to France when so many disgrace it. George 
Sand is one of the glories of our age and country. She had a 
great heart like Barbes, a great mind like Balzac, and a great 
soul like Lamartine. To enumerate her masterpieces were 
needless, and a plagiarism from the stories of universal mem¬ 
ory. She was good, and accordingly she had detractors, but 
the insults to her were of that kind which posterity will count 
as glories.” 

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin was born in Paris, July 5th, 
1804 “just a month after her parents had concluded the irre¬ 
vocable union with each other.” Her father, Maurice Dupin, 
an officer of the army, was a son of M. Dupin de Franceuil, 
who married a daughter of the famous Maurice de Saxe. She 
was thus a great-granddaughter of Maurice de Saxe, who was 
a natural son of Augustus II., of Poland. Four years after his 
marriage, Dupin fell from his horse and was killed, leaving his 
wife and child without any means except those which his 
mother, the old Mine. Dupin, could be expected to supply. 
This circumstance placed the little Aurore upon a trial which 
is seldom gone through without leaving a deep impression upon 
the whole of a human being s life. The moment the father was 
dead, the mother and the grandmother, who could not endure 
each other, inaugurated a fight for the possession of the little 
girl. The grandmother was a strange mixture of the aristo- 


GEORGE SAND. 


749 


cratic pretensions of her birth with the ultra-liberal ideas of 
the eighteenth century. Wealthy, refined, of excellent connec¬ 
tions in society, she could not bear her gypsy-like daughter-in- 
law, and as 1 lie latter had no money whatever, she had to yield 
to the dictation of the old lady, and the little Aurore was 
taken to the Chateau de Nohant, the old seat of Dupin’s family 
in the Berri, where she had full liberty to indulge and develop 
her romantic and wayward tendencies. The least desire of the 
child was law at Nohant. Dressed in boy’s clothes, she was 
all day long on horseback, with no other chaperon than a peas¬ 
ant groom about as old as herself. It is to the recollections of 
these years that we owe all her delightful pastoral stories. 

As the girl grew older, she was placed for three years (1817- 
20) in the convent of the English Augustines, Paris, where she 
became for a time a zealous devotee, accepting the mysteries of 
Catholicism with ecstacy, which was followed by a morbid reac¬ 
tion. She tormented herself with scruples, accused herself of 
constant sin, and became very despondent. 

In 1820 she left the convent and returned to Nohant, where 
her love and taste for na^ral scenery, horseback-excursions, 
and philosophy were fully indulged. She read Aristotle, Leib¬ 
nitz, and Locke; but Bousseau was her prime favorite among 
authors. 

In 1821, on the death of her grandmother, she became heiress 
of the estate of Nohant, and in 1822 was married to M. Dude- 
vant, a retired officer of the army. They had two children, 
Maurice and Solange. After living together for about ten years, 
they separated by mutual consent, because tlieir tastes and 
tempers were incompatible. Indeed, the man to whom the 
unhappy girl had tied herself was in no way fit to be her 
husband. Void of all literary or artistic taste, a stiff, passion¬ 
less individual, without position, name, or fortune, he became 
within a few years both useless and intolerable to her. Having 
at the separation given up her fortune to her husband, but 
reserving to herself the education of the two children, she 
became a resident of Paris, and adopted the profession of liter¬ 
ature for a subsistence. The first years (1831-35) she spent there 
proved full of hardship. Her first literary attempts were by no 
means encouraging. The first work by which she attracted any 


750 


GEORGE SAND. 


attention at all was the novel of “Rose et Blanche,” which she 
wrote in conjunction with Jules Sandeau, for whom Delatouche 
of the “Figaro” invented the abbreviated nom deplume of Jules 
Sand. The novel had considerable success, and she was en¬ 
couraged to make another trial. She then wrote “Indiana” 
(1832) all by herself, and the “Figaro,” anxious to preserve the 
prestige cf the successful nom de plume, induced her to sign it 
with the name of George Sand. These two names of Jules and 
George Sand were for a considerable time taken as being those 
of two brothers. The mistake was all the more natural, as 
George Sand had taken again to wearing men’s clothes as she 
used to in her childhood. 

Her celebrity was increased by “ Yalentine ” (1832), and a 
paradoxical work of fiction, entitled “Leila” (1833), which, said 
the “National Review,” “is the most famous and the most 
tj r pical of her novels. It is to an English reader, and judged 
of from the point of view of common sense, one of the most 
incoherent, foolish, morbid, blasphemous, and useless books 
that have been sent across the Channel during the imesent 
century.” Y/ith the Latin race and with the Russians and 
Pole’s, George Sand became popular from the very beginning of 
her literary career. But her failure with the English at first 
was owing to the bad name which from the very start was 
given to her by the “Quarterly Review,” the then great organ 
of the ultra Tory party. Probably nobody in England, except 
the writer of that review, had then read any of her productions; 
but that writer had concluded from some of Ihem that George 
Sand was inclined to find fault with the clergy , with the institu¬ 
tion of indissoluble matrimony, and with despotism in government . 
This was deemed reason enough for declaring her to be one of 
the most immoral and irreligious writers. The fact of her being 
a woman, and a young woman, too, only increased her guilt; 
and when subsequently people heard the rumor of her divorce 
and the accounts of other particulars of her life, her name 
became opprobrious. How profoundly these literary slanders 
Wounded George Sand can be seen in many of her works. She 
says, “Nobody has been more ill-treated or more calumniated 
than mfe, and nobody has clung with more force and more 
suffering to the hope of divine justice and to the feeling of one’s 


GEORGE SAND. 


751 


innocence. Since the publication of a few works, too sincere 
and too courageous to be pardoned to a woman, had fixed upon 
ray name a number of astonished or inquisitive eyes, there was 
no disgusting lie, no monstrous and stupid suspicion, no dirty 
and incredible insinuation, which has not been used to pollute 
this name. Since that moment I could not say a word, could 
not write a line, could not take a step without my purest 
intentions being subjected to the vilest interpretations. Why 
did God make me so unlucky, and why does he permit the 
impudence of cowardly men to smirch the existence of honest 
people ? Is it then really true that good men have to wash 
with tears of anger and shame the mud thrown at them? Oh 
Lord! Lord ! what are you thinking about when you send a 
guardian angel to the baby yet clinging to its mother’s breast, 
and when you make your providence take care of the slightest 
weed in the field, while you allow the honor of a woman to 
be shattered and trodden under foot by the first youngster that 
passes by?” 

Passages like this have been called blasphemous; but they 
certainly do not show that the author disbelieved in the exist¬ 
ence of God. Still no wonder the ‘‘National Review” followed 
in the wake of the “Quarterly.” But the same critic of the 
“National” remarks, “She has a true and a wide appreciation 
of beauty, a constant command of rich and glowing language, 
and a considerable faculty of self-analysis and self-reflection. 

, . . In spite of all her defects, she awakens an admiration 
which cannot be reasoned away.” 

She afterwards produced “Metella” (1833), “Leone Leoni ” 
(1834), “ Jacques ” (1834), and “ Mauprat ” (1836). Her “Spiridion ” 
(1839), and “Consuelo” (1844), are said to have been written 
under the inspiration of her friend Pierre Leroux. Between 
1844 and 1850 she published the, pastoral romances “ La Mare 
au Diable” (1846), “Francois le Champi ” (1849), and “La petite 
Fadette,” which were much admired, as models of a new style 
of fiction. Even the “National Review” testified that these 
are “free from all that provokes censure in other writings. . . 
They move as with a quiet flow that is irresistibly fascinating, 
and are full of beauties of language to which it is impossible 
to do justice.” 


752 


GEOliGE SAND. 


As to religion, she says in her “ Histoire do ma Vie:” — 
“ My religion has never varied in substance. Its past forms 
have, under the light of reflection, vanished from me as they 
have vanished from my century. But the eternal doctrines of 
the merciful God, of the immortal soul, and of the hope of 
future life have resisted all analysis, all discussion, and even 
all occasional desperate doubts.” 

In politics she was an advanced liberal. She was an ardent 
partisan of the revolution of 1848, after which she edited a 
democratic weekly paper for a short time. She also boldly 
professed herself to be a socialist, and denounced the conven¬ 
tional system of marriage; forming platonic and other more 
intimate relations with Jules Sand, with Alfred de Musset, with 
Michel de Bourges, and lastly with Chopin. All these relations 
were highly intellectual and esthetic, as well as genuine affairs 
of the heart. She was an exquisite discerner and discriminator 
in all appertaining to the “grand passion,” and always raised 
her voice against “prostitution of the heart.” 

Among her dramas are “Claudie,” “Moliere,” “Flaminio,” 
and “Lucie.” In 1854 she published her Autobiography, in 
which the disappointed public found too little of personalities 
and anecdotes and too much of philosophy. Among her recent 
works are “Constance Verrier,” “Flavie,” “Tamaris,” “An¬ 
tonia,” and “Laura.” 

George Sand was an unmistakable genius — a genius by 
descent, education, and most varied experience — and only as a 
genius is she to be interpreted and criticised. She was a grand 
woman with grand merits and grand faults, and she will live 
in all History a very Empress of Thought and Feeling, while 
her millions of “unco guid” disparagers shall have forever 
disappeared in the great inane of utter oblivion —the limbo of 
carping mediocres and incapables. Her personal charms were 
of a nature which does not admit of description. She had 
never been a handsome woman, although she was always a 
fascinating one. Like Rachel, she had large, brilliant dark 
eyes, and like Bachei she was never understood by the “rabble 
of common sense.” Only those blest and curst with the Higher 
Romance can ever commune with George Sand. 


FEUERBACH. 


753 


FEUERBACH. 


The name of this great German has at last received a well- 
merited prominence in the pages of philosophy. The life of this 
now eminent skeptic was one of thought, and his writings are 
his real biography. The vicissitudes of liis simple life do not 
present any sensational features. His father was Anselm von 
Feuerbach, a celebrated German jurist at Landshut in Bavaria, 
where Ludwig was born on the twen' y-eighth of July 1804. 

He was placed at an early age as a pupil of the Gymnasium 
at Anspacli. At this time he was he most pious kind of a 
Christian, and in the fervor of 1 is religious zeal he soon 
exchanged the Anspach school for the University of Heidelberg 
where he determined to devote himself to the study of theology. 
But at last finding there no sa isfaetory nouiishment for the 
restless cravings of his aspiring intellect, he repaired, in 1S24, to 
Berlin, whence he wrote to his father as follows: “I have 
abandoned theology, not however wantonly or recklessly or from 
dislike, but because it does not satisfy me, becase it does not 
give me what I indispensably need. I want to press Nature to 
my heart, from whose depth the cowardly theologian shrinks 
back: I want to embrace man, but man in his entirety.” 

At that time Hegel was attracting the young students of 
Germany; and for a time Feuerbach was carried along with 
the popular tide. But with uncommon independence of mind 
he ere long emancipated himself from the authority of the 
great master, determined to throw off speculative philosophy 
altogether, and to devote himself exclusively to the only true 
science of Nature. 

He was prevented from continuing his studies by the death 
of King Max the First of Bavaria, through whose liberal 
patronage he and his four brothers had been maintained at 
school. In 1828 he settled as a private tutor at the University 
of Erlangen, lecturing upon logic and metaphysics. But the 
speculative scholasticism of a royal university was an uncon- 


754 


FEUERBACH. 


genial atmosphere for his investigating and progressive mind; 
and throwing up henceforth all connection with licensed insti¬ 
tutions of learning and popular systems, he retired into the 
solitude of rural life at a little place near Anspach. There, dur¬ 
ing a residence of twenty-five years, Nature and Science 
absorbed all the fervor of his enthusiasm, and inspired him 
with the most important of his literary creations. 

In 1848 he was invited to Heidelberg by the students, where 
he gave a course of lectures before a promiscuous audience on 
“The Essence of Religion.” The feelings with which he hailed 
his self-emancipation from the thraldom of official and scholas¬ 
tic influences can best be realized from the words in which he 
gave vent to his exultation, when in 1838 he had been united in 
marriage to the sister of a friend who had secured for him his 
rural asylum; “ Now I can do homage to my genius; now I 
can devote mys.elf independently, freely, regardlessly to the 
development of my own being! ” 

During the last years of his life he transferred his residence 
to Rechenberg, where he lived exclusively to liis family and a 
small circle of intimate friends. Towards the close of his life 
he suffered greatly from severe and annoying deprivations, for, 
solely devoted as he had been to the service of science, he had 
not hoarded up any riches. But a subscription on the part of 
his contemporaries in Europe and America relieved him and 
his family from want of cares for the rest of his life. But his 
health, undermined by severe mental labor and deprivation, 
failed more and more rapidly, until a stroke of apoplexy over¬ 
shadowed his existence and caused his death on the twelfth of 
September, 1872. 

Among his waitings which have been published in a uniform 
edition, comprising ten volumes, the following deserve special 
mention: “Thoughts on Death and Immortality” (1830), “ His¬ 
tory of Modern Philosophy” (1833), “Representation, Develop¬ 
ment, and Criticism of Liberty” (1837), “Pierre Bayle ” (1838), 

“ Essence of Christianity ” (1841). This last-named work forms 
the principal basis for the thirty lectures on the “ Essence of 
Religion,” which he held at Heidelberg in 1848-49, The last of 
his principal works is “Theogony According to the Sources of 
Classic, Hebrew, and Christian Antiquity,” which forms the 


FEUERBACH. 


755 

ninth volume of his work; the tenth volume (1866), consisting 
of a promiscuous collection of essays on “Deity, Liberty, and 
Immortality from the Standpoint of Anthropology.” 

Perhaps no better understanding of Feuerbach’s writings in^ 
general could be conveyed than in his own words, in which he 
briefly speaks of his life-work as follows: “My business was, 
and above everything is, to illuminate the dark regions of relig¬ 
ion with the torch of reason, that man at last may no longer 
be a sport to the hostile powers that hitherto and now avail 
themselves of the mystery of religion to oppress mankind. 
My aim has been to prove that the powers before which man 
crouches are creatures of his own limited, ignorant, uncultured, 
and timorous mind, to prove that in special the being whom 
man sets over against himself as a separate supernatural exist¬ 
ence is his own being. The purpose of my writing is to make 
men auf/iropologians instead of Meologians; man-lovers instead 
of God-lovers; students of this world instead of candidates for 
the next; self-reliant citizens of the earth instead of subservient 
and wily ministers of a celestial and terrestrial monarchy. My 
object is, therefore, anything but negative, destructive; it is 
positive. I deny in order to affirm. I deny the illusions of 
theology and religion that I may affirm the substantial being 
of man.” 

The two following are the introductory propositions to his 
“Essence of Religion ”: 

“1. That being which is different from and independent of 
man, or, which is the same thing, of God, as represented in 
the “Essence of Christianity,”—the being without human na¬ 
ture, without human qualities, and without human individuality 
is in reality nothing but Nature. 

“2. The feeling of dependence in man is the source of relig¬ 
ion ; but the object of this dependence, viz.: that upon which 
man is and feels himself dependent, is originally nothing but 
Nature. Nature is the first original object of religion, as is suf¬ 
ficiently proved by the history of all religions and nations.” 


756 


GEORGE H. EYANS. 


GEORGE II. EVANS. 

George Henry Evans was born in Bromyard, Herefordshire, 
England, March 25, 1805. While a mere child his parents emi¬ 
grated to New York. At an early age he served an appren¬ 
ticeship at the printing trade. At length he was enabled to 
establish an office of his own, and immediately commenced the 
publication of works of a radical and reformatory character. 

He early espoused the cause of the anti-monopoly working¬ 
man’s party, having for his co-laborers the distinguished reform¬ 
ers, Thomas Skidmore and William Leggett. He first published 
the “ Workingman’s Advocate,” and the “Man.” Like Legget’s 
“ Evening Post,” these made a powerful opposition to the bank¬ 
ing system. Possessing an original power of perception, Evans 
saw and exposed the evils of banking; and ignoring all mere 
party issues, he likewise sought to abolish the evils of land 
monopoly, which he considered one of the greatest afflictions 
of society. He finally removed to a farm in New Jersey, where 
he began the publication of the “Radical” in monthly num¬ 
bers, through which he sought to propagate his land reforming 
views. In March, 1844, he issued “ The People’s Rights,” devoted 
to the following measures of reform: The freedom of the Pub¬ 
lic Lands in a limited quantity to actual settlers only, and the 
discontinuance of their sale to non-residents; the exemption of 
the Homestead; and the limitation of the purchase of all other 
land to a certain quantity. 

His mode of agitation was to pledge the support of the anti¬ 
monopolists to such candidates as would advocate their meas¬ 
ures; and if they declined, a land reform ticket was nominated 
and voted for by his friends, with the view of holding the bal¬ 
ance of power. After pursuing this policy for five years the 
principles of the reform party began to be adopted into politi¬ 
cal platforms, and at last resulted in the present homestead law 
granting the quarters in the alternate sections of the public 
lands to actual settlers after an occupancy of five years. 


GEORGE H. EVANS. 


757 


George Henry Evans saw that most of the revolutions and 
convulsions among men were the evil effects of alienation — 
that the feudal had changed to the tenure, the monarchy to 
the representative, each to a worse phase of the evil, and that 
the only remedy was the securing to each human being a share 
in the soil. At first he was quite sanguine of the accomplish¬ 
ment of this result; but when he came to understand the igno¬ 
rance of the people, and that all the institutions of govern¬ 
ments and society were founded upon the laws of alienation, 
he realized that all he could do would be to start a new era of 
reform, and trust to an enlightened posterity for its consumma¬ 
tion. The great sole aim of Evan’s life was the improvement 
of society by improving the surroundings of men, advancing 
their condition in life, and making them independent, happier, 
and therefore better. He died in Granville, New Jersey, Feb¬ 
ruary 2d, 1855. 

While the attention of Evans was largely directed to the 
reforms above indicated, he was upon theological subjects a 
firm and consistent Infidel. He utterly discarded all the falla¬ 
cies of a supernatural, revealed religion and regarded Nature 
or the Universe as the Supreme Power. He had not the slight¬ 
est sympathy with the oppressive system of priestcraft which 
he clearly saw in the centuries that have passed away has been 
an enemy to his fellow-men. His love of the human race was 
paramount to all other sentiments or beliefs, and he naturally 
felt a strong opposition to everything and every influence which 
he saw that oppressed them or retarded their advancement on 
the road to prosperity and happiness. 

He was brother to Elder Frederick W. Evans, a prominent 
leader in the Shaker Society at Mount Lebanon, and upon the 
subject of inspiration, revelation, heavenly guidance and the 
necessity of opposing Nature’s laws he differed widely from his 
brother in the view the latter adopted. Frederick looks to 
heaven and the spirits of departed friends for guidance and 
instruction, while George Henry looked to Nature and Reason 
only and to their recognized laws. 


758 


JOHN STUART MILL, 


JOHN STUART MILL. 

This eminent English philosopher and economist was the 
son of James Mill, the celebrated author of “History of British 
India,” Essays on “Jurisprudence,” “Liberty of the Press,” 
“Law of Nations,” &c., “Elements of Political Economy,” and 
“Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.” John 
Stuart was born in London in May, 1806. He was educated at 
home by his father, (whose work on India had procured for 
him the government office of head of the department of Indian 
correspondence) and entered in 1823 the service of the East 
India Company as a clerk in the India House. In his early 
life he contributed .to the “Edinburgh” and “Westminster” 
Beviews. In 1843 he published a “System of Logic, Ratiocina- 
tivo and Inductive,” (2 vols). The practical portion of this 
work was, says its author, “an attempt to contribute some¬ 
thing towards the solution of a question which the decay of 
old opinions and the agitation that disturbs European society 
to its utmost depth, render as important in the present day, to 
the practical interests of human life, as it must at all times be 
to the completeness of our speculative knowledge.” 

In 1844 he brought out “ Essays on some Unsettled Questions 
in Political Economy.” He acquired a high reputation by a 
popular work entitled “ The Principles of Political Economy, 
with some of their applications to Social Philosophy” (1848). 
As a writer he is distinguished by originality of thought and 
acuteness in reasoning. In political principles he was an ad¬ 
vanced liberal, and all his sympathies were in favor of liberty 
and progress. 

About 1850 he married Harriet Taylor, a lady of rare intel¬ 
lectual powers. Their love-union was complete. On Nov. 3, 
1858, Mrs. Mill died at Avignon; and over her grave was placed 
that most pathetic and eloquent of epitaphs:—“Her great and 
loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original, and 
comprehensive intellect, made her the guide and support, the 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


759 


instructor in wisdom, and the example in goodness, as she was 
the sole earthly delight, of those who had the happiness to 
belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was 
generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence 
has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, 
and will be in those still to come. Were there even a few 
hearts and intellects like hers, this earth would already become 
the hoped-for heaven.” Henceforth, during the fourteen years 
that were to elapse before he sh uld be laid in the same grave, 
Avignon, where he might be within sight of his beloved wife’s 
tomb, was the chosen haunt of Mr. Mill. 

Mr. Mill became examiner of Indian Correspondence in 
1836. During the late rebellion in the United States, he was 
among the few prominent English writers who defended the 
cause of the North and of the Federal Union. 

Among his other works may be mentioned “An Essay on 
Liberty” and “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,” “Con¬ 
siderations on Representative Government,” and an “ Exami¬ 
nation of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” of the last of 
which a highly favorable review from the pen of Mr. Grote, the 
historian, has been published. He was for some time editor of 
the “Westminster Review.” In 1865 he was elected a member of 
Parliament for Westminster. He became an able debater, and, 
in 1866 and 1867 made several speeches in favor of reform and 
extension of the elective franchise. His career as a legislator 
was very successful. “ Mr. Mill’s success,” says a competent 
authority, “has been the most marked and decided in the 
annals of Parliament. No man has ever before acquired so high 
a consideration in so short a time.” But “there is little doubt 
that the majority of his supporters in 1865 did not know what 
his political opinions were, and that they voted for him simply 
on his reputation as a great thinker. A large number, however, 
probably supported him, knowing in a general way the views 
advocated in his writings, but thinking that he would probably 
be like many other politicians, and not allow his practice to be 
in the least degree influenced by his theories. ... It was one 
thing to write an essay in favor of proportional representation: 
it was another thing to assist in the insertion of the principle 
of .proportional representation in the Reform Bill, and to form a 


760 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


school of practical politicians who took care to insure the adop¬ 
tion of this principle in the school-board elections. . . . It was 
one thing to advocate freedom of thought and discussion in 
all political and religious questions; it was another to speak 
respectfully of Mr. Odger, and to send Mr. Bradlaugh a contri¬ 
bution toward the expenses of his candidature for Northamp¬ 
ton. . . . His fearless disregard of unpopularity, as manifested 
in his prosecution, in conjunction with Mr. P. A. Taylor, of 
Ex-Governor Eyre [the butcher of Jamaica] was another proof 
that he was entirely unlike the people who call themselves 
‘practical politicians.’ His persistency in conducting this pros¬ 
ecution was one of the main causes of his defeat at the election 
of 1868, said defeat being the best proof of his decided success, 
in the best meaning of the ivord. 

Mr. Mill distinguished himself as an earnest and able advo¬ 
cate of the rights of women. In his work, “The Subjection of 
Women” (1869), lie takes the ground “that the principle which 
regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes — 
the lega4 subordination of one sex to the other —is wrong in 
itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improve¬ 
ment, and that it might be replaced by a principle of perfect 
equality.” And he not only advocated theoretically the claims 
of women to representation, but he actually introduced the sub¬ 
ject into the House of Commons, promoted an ac:ive political 
organization in its favor, and thus converted it, from a philo¬ 
sophical dream, into a question of pressing and practical im¬ 
portance. And this was one of the causes of his “ successful 
defeat ” at the election of 1868. 

In philosophy Mr. Mill was an English Positivist. “It is 
impossible to forget that it was by Mr. Mill that Comte was 
first made known in. this country [England], and that by him 
first in this country the great doctrines of positive thought, the 
supreme reign of law in the moral and social world, no less 
than in the intellectual world, were reduced to system and life. 
This conception, as a whole, has been gradually forming in the 
minds of all modern thinkers; but its full scope and force were 
presented to Englishmen for the first time by Mr. Mill.” But, 
“in introducing to the English world the principles of Comte, 
Mr. Mill clearly and ardently professed the Positive Philosophy 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


761 


at that time restricted to its earlier phase alone. ... It is 
impossible, too, to forget the generous assistance which he 
extended to Comte, whereby he was enabled to continue his 
labors in philosophy— impossible, also, to forget the active 
communion of mind between them, and the large space which 
their intercourse occupied in the thoughts of both.” But “it 
is needless to repeat . . . how many and deep are the dif¬ 
ferences which separate him from the later doctrines of Comte, 
and how completely he repudiated connection with the religious 
reconstruction of Positivism. We ... shall claim Mr. Mill 
for Positivism in no other sense than that in which he claimed 
it for himself in his own latest writings.” Of the general idea, 
however, not only of Comte’s “ Philosophy,” but also of his 
“Ethics” and “Religion,” Mr. Mill was all praise. It was 
when speaking of the details of “ notions,” rites, and ceremo¬ 
nies, etc., that he became the unsparing critic. He says of the 
“Religion of Humanity”: “M. Comte be ieves in what is meant 
by the infinite nature of duty, but he refers the obligations of 
duty, as well as all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, 
at once ideal and real; the Human Race, conceived as a con¬ 
tinuous whole, including the past, present, and the future. 
This Great Collective Existence, this “Grand Etre,” as he 
terms it, though the feelings it can incite are necessarily very 
different from those which direct themselves towards an ideally 
perfect Being, has, as he forcibly urges, ihis advantage in 
respect to us, that it really needs our services, which Omnipo¬ 
tence cannot, in any genuine sense of the term, be supposed to 
do; and M. Comte says, that assuming the existence of a Su¬ 
preme Providence, (which he is as far from denying as from 
affirming), the best, and even the only way in which we can 
rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our utmost to love 
and serve that other Great Being, whose inferior Providence 
has bestowed on us all the benefits that we owe to the labors 
and virtues of former generations. 

“It may not be consonant to usage to call this a religion; 
but the term so applied has a meaning, and one which is not 
adequately expressed by any other word. Candid persons of all 
creeds may be willing to admit, that if a person has an ideal 
object, his attachment and sense of duty toward which are able 


762 


JOHN STUAIIT MILL. 


to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensi¬ 
ties, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that person has a relig¬ 
ion ; and though every one naturally prefers his own religion to 
any other, all must admit that if the object of this attachment, 
and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our fellow-crea¬ 
tures, this Religion of the Infidel cannot, in honesty and 
conscience, be called an intrinsically bad one. Many, indeed, 
may be unable to believe that this object is capable of gather¬ 
ing round it feelings sufficiently strong: but this is exactly the 
point on which a doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent 
reader of M. Comte: and w r e join with him in contemning, as 
equally irrational and mean, the conception of human nature 
as incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to any 
object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal 
enjoyment . . . The power which may be acquired over the mind 
by the idea of the general interest of the Human Race, both 
as a source of emotion and as a motive to conduct, many have 
perceived; but w T e know not if any one, before M. Comte, real¬ 
ized so fully as he has done, all the majesty of which that idea 
is susceptible. . . . That the ennobling power of this grand 

conception may have its full efficac}^, we should, with M. Comte, 
regard the Grand Etre, Humanity, or Mankind, as composed, in 
the past, solely of those who, in every age and variety of posi¬ 
tion have played their part worthily in life. It is only as thus 
restricted that the aggregate of our species becomes an object 
deserving our veneration. The unworthy members of it are 
best dismissed from our habitual thoughts; and the imperfec- 
tions which adhered through life, even to those of the dead 
who deserve honorable remembrance, should be no further 
borne in mind than is necessary not to falsify our conception 
of facts. . . . We, therefore, not only hold that M. Comte 

w r as justified in the attempt to develop his philosophy into a 
religion, and had realized the essential conditions of one, but 
that all other religions are made better in proportion as, in their 
practical result, they are brought to coincide with that which he 
aimed at constructing ” 

Mr. Mill’s Posthumous Essays, most of which were written 
twenty years before his death, contain many opinions, about 
Jesus especially, which he most certainly would have omitted 


i 


JOHN STUART MILL. «763 

had lie lived to prepare them for publication, if, indeed, he ever 
meant to publish them. He is not by any means, as philoso¬ 
pher or crilic, to be judged by them. But still, in them he goes 
as far as to say: 

“Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical.” 

“ There is no shadow of justice in the general arrangements 
of Nature; we place ourselves [for safety a .d comfort] to a 
greater or less extent, under one set of laws of Nature, instead 
of another.” 

In his argument on Theism, he gives valid reason for his 
opinion, that if he believes in a God, he must believe also that 
any conceivable God can possess only limited power, as the 
vice and misery in the world forbid a belief in an omnipotent 
God who is aiso perfectly just and benevolent. 

In the essay on “The Utility of Beligion,” while he utterly 
ignores a Personal God and personal immortality, he says the 
“essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the 
emotions and desires towards an ideal object recognized as of the 
highest excellence and as rightfully paramount over all selfish 
objects of desire.” 

In another place he calls “The Infinite” “a farrago of con¬ 
tradictions,” and plainly shows that he regarded it as the re - 
ductio ad absurdissimum of the transcendental philosophy. In 
another place still, he intimates that if he knew that God 
would damn him for his non-belief, he would defy him to do it 
and preserve His moral integrity. 

On May 5, 1873, at Avignon, after a season of customary 
health, Mr. Mill was attacked by a violent form of erysipelas, 
which at once made fearful inroads into a constitution already 
considerably worn down by too hard study and that emotional 
predominance of the higher sentiments which tended to unduly 
subordinate the lower nature of physical vitality and recupera¬ 
tive power. In three days he was dead. “On the tenth he was 
buried in the grave to which he had, through fourteen years, 
looked forward to as a pleasant resting-place, because during 
fourteen years there had been a vacant place beside the remains 
of the wife whom he so fondly loved.” 


/ 


T64 


STRAUSS. 


STRAUSS. 


The distinguished author of what is termed the “mythical 
theory” of interpreting the Gospels, was born at Ludwigsburg, 
In Wiirtemburg, in 1808. He studied theology at Tubingen. 
In 1832 he became assistant teacher in the Theological Institute 
of that University. 

In 1835 he produced his “Life (f Jesus Critically Treated,” 
in which he amply proved that the New Testament history is 
substantially a tissue of fables. In 1839 he was appointed pro¬ 
fessor of divinity at Zurich, but the hostility of the people to 
his doctrines was so loudly expressed that his position there 
became untenable. He published several other works, among 
which are “The Christian Dogmatics considered in its Histor¬ 
ical Development and its Conflict with Modern Science,” (1840- 
41); a “New Life of Jesus,” (1864); and “The Old Faith and 
the New,” a few years ago. 

The God-idea of Strauss appears to be similar to that of 
many other Hegelians, who regard the Deity not as a conscious 
Being, but as an unconscious spirit or influence, or what might 
be termed a system of lavs, material and spiritual. This spirit 
first becomes conscious in Humanity, which, according to 
Strauss and his followers, is God manifested in the flesh. 

“Thirty years ago,” says the “London Quarterly Beview,” 
“‘The Life of Jesus’ of Strauss startled the world like a clap 
of thunder out of a calm sky. ... In the name of criticism 
he declared that the gospels were almost valueless as historical 
materials; in the name of science, he pronounced that miracles 
were impossible.” 

“Strauss declined,” says Dorner, “the rude method of com¬ 
bating Christianity in the style of the ‘ Wolfenbuttel Frag¬ 
ments;’ as he likewise covered with ridicule the naturalistic 
explanations of the miracles by Dr. Paulus. To the biblical 
supernaturalism which sought to found the truth of Christianit y 
upon inspiration, miracles, and prophecy, he opposed the 
mythical theory; according to which the portrait of Christ in 


STRAUSS. 


765 


the Gospels was the product of tradition, of which the historic 
element was obscure, determined in its uninentional fabrication 
by Old Testament images, particularly the Messianic. Christ, 
however, to whom the Messianic i^redictions W ere transferred 
by the common people, could not have been a supernatural 
phenomenon, since a miracle includes an impossibility; so also 
the four gospels could not have proceeded from apostles or 
eye-witnesses, because, with their little knowledge, designed 
fabrication must be imputed to them.” 

In his Introduction to “The Old Faith and the New,” Strauss 
says: “I have never desired, nor do I now desire to disturb 
the contentment or the faith of any one. But where these are 
already shaken, I desire to point out the direction in which I 
believe a firmer soil is to be found. ... I shall, therefore, 
have a double task to perform, first, to expound our position 
towards the old creed [Christianity], and then the fundamental 
principles of that new cosmic conception which we acknowledge 
as ours.” These mighty matters are elaborately treated by 
giving exhaustive answers to the following self-raised questions: 
i. Are we still Christians ? n. Have we still a Eeligion ? in. 
What is our Conception of the Universe ? iv. What is our Buie 
of Life? To the sub-question, “What is our attitude towards 
the Church?” he replies: “As if meditation were only possible 
in a church, edification only to be found in a sermon! Why 
hold fast by an antiquated, exhausted form, at a time and in a 
stage of culture, when there flow so many other and more 
abundant sources of intellectual stimulus and moral invigora- 
tion ? After all, it is nothing but habit. It is so difficult to 
think of the place as empty where something used always to 
stand. Sunday must continue Sunday, and on Sunday one go s 
to church. As we have remarked at the commencement, we 
have no wish to quarrel with anybody; ‘let each act up to his 
own light.* We would but indicate how we act, how we have 
acted these many years. Besides our profession . . . then, I 
say, and the family life and friendly circle, we are eagerly acces¬ 
sible to all the higher interests of humanity. ... To the end 
of forming just conclusions in these things, we study history , 
which has now been made easy to the unlearned by a number 
of attractively and popularly written works; at the same time 


766 


STRAUSS. 


we endeavor to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences, 
where also there is no lack of sources of information; and 
lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the performances of 
our great musicians, we find a satisfying stimulus for the intel¬ 
lect and the heart, and for fancy in her deepest or most sportive 
moods. ‘Thus we live, and hold on our way with joy.’” 

Finally, as a conclusion to the whole matter, he writes: — 
“ Now I will bid my readers farewell. . . . Neither the old 

worn road, to which the Creed may be compared, nor a freshly 
constructed one, such as the modern s ientific Cosmic conception, 
are conducive to ease and celerity of travel. There one sinks 
every moment into deep ruts, is impeded by gaps and runnels 
which have been worn by rain and wild gushing waters; it is 
true, we found the places that had been damaged partly 
repaired; but all this was mere patchwork, and could no longer 
obviate the essential faults of the road, its defective ground¬ 
work, and devious course. The engineers of the new route have 
endeavored to avoid these mistakes; but, on the other hand, 
many of its parts are very roughly constructed or not con¬ 
structed at all: here a chasm must still be filled in, there a 
rock blown up, and all through, one is much jolted by the 
newly laid stones, whose sharp edges have not yet been worn 
away by constant friction. Nor will I assert that the coach to 
which my esteemed readers have been obliged to entrust them¬ 
selves with me, fulfilled every requirement. Nevertheless, 
should our truthful report draw an ever-increasing number of 
followers to this highway: should the conviction spread abroad 
that it alone is the future highway of the world, which now 
only requires partial completion, and especially general use, in 
order to become easy and pleasant — while all the trouble and 
expense still lavished on the repair of the old route must inevi¬ 
tably be wasted and lost,—should such be the results of our 
undertaking, we shall not, I think, have cause to regret, at the 
end, our having accomplished together the long and toilsome 
journey. ,, 

That David Frederick Strauss was an Infidel in the usual ac¬ 
ceptation of that word is most clear. No man had less faith in 
myths and mysticisms. He died February 8, 1874. 


MAZZINI. 


767 


MAZZINI. 

Giuseppe Mazzini, one of the nobles'; patriots whom Italy 
has produced, was born at Genoa about 1807, and was educated 
for the legal profession. In his youth he wrote several literary 
articles for the leading Italian journals, and was deemed an 
adherent of the romantic school. In early life he became ar¬ 
dently devoted to the liberation and unity of his beloved country, 
which was at that time languishing under Austrian oppression. 
In 1730 ho joined the Society of Carbonari, which he proposed 
to reform. Having been banished or proscribed, he retired, in 
1831, to Marseilles, where he organized a political association 
called “Young Italy,” whose watchword was “God end the 
People,” and whose fundamental idea was that the liberty of 
the Italians could only be secured by the union of the several 
States or Kingdoms into one nation. He propagated his prin¬ 
ciples by writing, and during a long period of exile and adver¬ 
sity, pursued his purpose with invincible constancy. 

About 1842 he became a resident of London, and began to 
contribute political and scientific articles to various journals, 
among which was the “Westminster Review.” His letters were 
opened in the post office, in 1814, by the British Secretary for 
the Home Department, John Graham. The revolutionary 
movements of 1848 restored him to his native country. He 
issued a journal called “Italia del Popolo,” and although he 
preferred a republic, was disposed to co-operate with King 
Charles Albert in resistance to Austrian domination, and he 
enlisted under the standard of Garibaldi. In February, 1849, 
he went to Rome, where a Republic had recently been organ¬ 
ized after the flight of the Pope. 

He was very soon recognized as the leader and master-spirit 
of the Republicans, and in March of that year Mazzini, Saffi, 
and Armellini were appointed triumvirs. They defended Rome 
resolutely against the French army, by which that city was 
captured in July, 1849. Mazzini then went into exile, selecting 


763 


MAZZINI. 


London for his residence and base of operations. He associated 
himself with Kossuth and Ledru Eollin to form an international 
revolutiomisry committee, about 1857. 

In 1857 he incited an insurrection in Northern Italy, and 
went to Genoa to direct it, but the movement failed. He co¬ 
operated with Garibaldi in his victorious expedition to Sicily in 
1860. In 1861 he republished with additions his “ Unity of 
Italy,” in which he says: “I know that the idea of a confedera¬ 
tion is both the counsel and design of one whom many Italians 
still regard as the friend and protector of Italy; but I know, too, 
that he is treacherous, a foreigner and a despot. That he should 
aeek to weaken in order to dominate us is easily understood; 
but the mere fact that the suggestion springs from such a source 
ought to be one of the most powerful warnings against it.” 

Mazzini's prescience has been fully verified by events that 
have within a few years taken place in Italy; and good grounds 
for esteeming him a prophet have existed. 

Mazzini was eminently a patriot and a deeply religious man, 
but was sternly opposed to the power of priestcraft. He saw 
in it a chief element which oppressed his dearly loved Italy, 
and he abhorred it in his very soul. He was the author of 
“The Duties of Man,” (1858), (English version 1862). In 1864 the 
first volume of the “Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini” 
(6 vols.) first appeared. 

The character of Mazzini is accurately and beautifully de¬ 
scribed by Thomas Carlyle as follows, in a letter to the “Lon¬ 
don Times,” June, 1844, and reprinted in the “Westminster 
Be view” for September of the same year: 

“I have had the honor to know M. Mazzini for a series of 
years: and I can, with great freedom, testify to ail men that 
he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, 
a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind — 
one of those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, but as units 
in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr-souls; 
who in silence, piously, in their daily life, understand and prac¬ 
tice what is meant by that.” 

Mazzini died March 10, 1872. 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


769 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The sixteenth President of the United States was born in 
Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809. His parents 
moved in the humblest walks of life and were extremely poor. 
His opportunities for acquiring an education were very scanty. 
His mother, a woman of considerable intelligence, taught him 
to read and write. When he was eight years of age his parents 
moved into Spencer County, Indiana, which was then very 
sparsely settled. Such chances as he had for acquiring learn¬ 
ing he used to the best advantage in the winter season. In the 
summer he worked at clearing land, farming, etc. 

At. the age of nineteen, in company with another young man 
about the same age, he set out in a flat boat, containing a cargo 
of goods of considerable value, and bound for New Orleans. 
While floating down the Mississippi they were attacked by a 
thieving band of negroes, but they courageously beat them off 
and arrived safely at the port of destination. 

In 1830 Abraham’s father removed to Decatur County, Illi¬ 
nois, and the son was of essential service in establishing a new 
home. It was here he split the famous rails which caused him 
in after years, when running for the office of President, to be 
called the “Rail Splitter.” During their first winter in Illinois, 
which was a very severe one, young Lincoln largely contributed 
to the support of the family by hunting. He was a good marks¬ 
man, and game at that time was plenty. 

The next two years he passed as a farm hand and as a clerk 
in a country store. 

The Black Hawk war broke out in 1832, and young Lincoln 
enlisted in it and served creditably till the close. Upon his 
return home he ran for the Legislature, but failed of an elec¬ 
tion. He tried store-keeping but did not win success thereat; 
then having learned something of surveying he worked for 
three years as surveyor in the employ of the government. 

In 1834 he was elected to the Legislature and soon took up 


770 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1837, 
whereupon he removed to Springfield, Ill., and commenced 
practice. He rose rapidly in his profession, to which he closely 
applied himself, and was elected to a second term in the 
Legislature. In 1814 he canvassed the State of Illinois in 
behalf of Henry Clay, who ran for President of the United 
States. In 1847 he was elected to the lower house of Congress, 
the only Whig from that State in Congress. He served a single 
term. In 1848 he canvassed his State for General Zachary 
Taylor, who was elected President. In the next year he was 
an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the U. S. Senate. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise created a great 
excitement in the entire country, and carried Illinois over to 
the Whigs, or rather to the Republican party which grew out 
of the Whig party. Lincoln had much to do in this revolution, 
and gained a wide reputation as an effective stump-speaker. 
In 1856 he was brought before the first Republican Convention 
and was prominently named as candidate for Vice-President 
with John C. Fremont. In 1858, as Republican candidate for 
the U. S. Senate, he canvassed the State with Stephen A. Doug¬ 
las. The canvass was a most animated one and attracted great 
attention in all parts of the country. Judge Douglas was con¬ 
sidered one of the ablest debaters in the country, but Lincoln 
acquitted himself with at least equal credit, although owing to 
the strength of Douglas’ party he was elected to the office. 
The writer had the pleasure of listening to a part of this joint 
debate and of making the acquaintance of Mr. Lincoln. 

During the next eighteen months Lincoln visited many 
parts of the country, delivering speeches of marked ability and 
power. In May, 1860, when the Republican Convention met at 
Chicago, he was on the third ballot chosen as its candidate for 
the presidency; and as the Democratic party was divided and 
had two candidates, Lincoln was elected on a plurality vote, 
receiving 1£0 electoral votes out of 303. 

The election of Lincoln was at once made by the extreme 
pro-slavery agitators of the South a pretext for dissolving the 
Union, although he had repeatedly declared his intention not 
to interfere with the existing institutions of the South. A 
month before he was inaugurated six Southern States withdrew 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


771 


from the Union, met in convention and framed a constitution 
for a new and independent confederacy. 

The President-elect left his home in Springfield for Washing¬ 
ton Feb. 11, 1861, and proceeded thither by a circuitous route, 1 ' 
delivering short pithy addresses at different points. The writer 
heard him at Cincinnati. He was informed at Philadelphia 
that a plot had been laid to assassinate him before he reached 
the seat of government, and it has been stated as a fact that 
at Baltimore he took a train he was not expected to take, and 
proceeded to the Capitol in the disguise of a Scotch cloak and 
cap. On the fourth of March he was duly inaugurated in the 
presence of an immense assemblage. 

Upon assuming the reins of government he found a very 
discouraging state of things. Seven States had taken them¬ 
selves out of the union, and others were preparing to follow. 
The credit of the government was low and the general confi¬ 
dence in its perpetuity was greatly shaken. The army and 
navy were small and much scattered over our wide domain; 
and through the treachery of public officials of the preceeding 
administration the public arms and forts were in many instances 
placed in the hands of the rebels. No President ever before 
took the control of the government under circumstances so 
discouraging: still Lincoln was cheerful and hopeful. Even on 
the 14th of April, 1861, when the bombardment and capture of 
Fort Sumter by the Confederate army roused the North to 
intense action, though he issued a call for 75,000 volunteers, it 
was seemingly with a faint idea that they would be needed. 

We cannot take the room to notice the details of the three 
years’ war that followed, commencing with the defeat at Bull 
Run, and ending with the surrender of Gen. Lee at Appomatox. 
The struggle was a long and bloody one. Many of the most 
thoughtful heads of America inevitably felt misgivings and 
anxieties as to the final result. No one had greater care or 
greater anxiety than had the, man at the head of the govern¬ 
ment. 

For eighteen months the war was continued with the view 
of retaining, undisturbed, the institution of slavery; but at 
length the necessity of destroying that institution broke upon 
the minds of the President and his Cabinet. On the 22d of 


772 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


September, 18C2, Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Pro¬ 
clamation, by which, as a war measure, four millions of slaves 
were declared free, and the baleful institution of African slavery 
was brought to an end in this country. In his message to 
Congress the President used this language: “In giving freedom 
to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in 
what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or 
meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. . . . The way is 
plain, peaceful, glorious, just,—a way which, if followed, the 
world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.” 

In 1864 Lincoln was reelected for a second term. At the 
time of his second inauguration the complete triumph of the 
federal authority over the seceded states was assured. The 
last battles had been fought, and war had substantially ceased. 
The President was looking forward to the more congenial work 
of pacification and reconstruction. How he designed to carry 
out this work may be inferred from the following remarks from 
his second inaugural: “With malice toward none, with charity 
for all, with firmness in the right, let us strive on to finish the 
■work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and 
his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 

Unfortunately the kind-hearted Lincoln w r as not to carry out 
the work of reconstruction to which he looked fonvard with 
such bright anticipations. But a little more than a month after 
his second inauguration, on the fourteenth of April, 1865, the 
hand of an assassin was raised to take his life. John Wilkes 
Booth, an actor and a reckless conspirator, governed by a 
wicked and foolish motive, approached him stealthily while he 
was witnessing a play in a theater, in a private box, and sent a 
bullet into his brain, and the President v T as rendered uncon¬ 
scious ; he lived several hours, when he breathed his last, more 
affectionately loved by the people of America, and more ex¬ 
tensively respected by the entire civilized world than any man 
who had filled the Presidential chair, Washington not ex¬ 
cepted. 

His genial kindness, his large-hearted sympathy, his untir¬ 
ing love of country, and his unfaltering desire to see her 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


773 


triumph over her foes, and to see the entire country united 
in the bonds of unity, endeared him most fondly to all who 
became acquainted with him. He went down to his grave loved 
and hone-red, as scarcely ever a man had before been honored 
and loved. 

The funeral honors bestowed upon the murdered President 
were grand and imposing. His body having been embalmed, 
was taken in state to his home in Springfield, Illinois, passing 
through the various cities on the way. The entire route was 
lined with mourners who pressed forward to pay their respects 
to the dead President. 

Honesty was the leading principle of Mr. Lincoln’s life. In 
his law practice he would only undertake such causes as he 
believed were founded in justice and right. Such clients as had 
cases that he deemed unjust or dishonest he turned over to 
other law5’ers. So well known was Lincoln’s strict integrity 
that for many years, while he still lived in Springfield, he was 
called by the familiar name of “Honest Old Abe,” and by this 
cognomen he was known far and near. It may be safely assert¬ 
ed that a more honest lawyer than Abraham Lincoln never 
practiced in the courts of the United States. 

Upon the subject of religious belief there is some diversity 
of claims. All his friends and acquaintances readily admit that 
in early manhood and middle age he was an unbeliever, or a 
Deist. In fact, he wrote a book or pamphlet vindicating this 
view. His most intimate friends that knew him best, claim that 
his opinions underwent no change in this respect; while a cer¬ 
tain number of Christians have, since his death, undertaken to 
make out that he had become a convert to Christianity. A 
Rev. Mr. Stuart, who at one time preached in Springfield, a 
Rev. Mr. Reed, and another disreputable party named Lewis, 
have written letters and made statements to the effect that Mr. 
Lincoln acknowledged to them that his mind had changed upon 
the subject of religion, and that he had become convinced of 
the truth of Christianity. Unfortunately, however, for the truth 
ef the statement, these gentlemen are not crediable witnesses, 
^wo of them, at least, would not be believed under oath by 
those who know them, and their statements disagree very 
widely as to the time when Mr. Lincoln made these admissions. 


774 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


One has it that it was as far back as in 1840 and another as 
recent as in 1863 when he lived in Washington. 

When the contradictory character of the evidence is taken 
into consideration, together with the fact that his nearest and 
most intimate friends who would be most likely the ones to 
know of Mr. Lincoln’s change, had any such taken place, the 
uncredibility of the asserted change is easily appreciated. His 
law partner, W. H. Herndon, who knew him intimately from 
1834 until his death, has testified that Mr. Lincoln was a 
positive unbeliever in Christianity, the divinity of Jesus, and 
all supernatural religion; and denies that his views upon 
these subjects underwent any change up to the time of his 
leaving Springfield. He was in the office with him almost con¬ 
stantly, had his full confidence, and certainly had a good oppor¬ 
tunity for learning the fact if any change in Lincoln’s views 
had taken place. 

In regard to any subsequent change in Mr. Lincoln’s views, 
his beloved and intimate friend, and private secretary in Wash¬ 
ington, John G. Nicolay, is a very competent witness. In a let¬ 
ter to W. II. Herndon, Esq., he used this language: “Mr. Lin¬ 
coln did not, to my knowledge, change his religious ideas, opin¬ 
ions or beliefs from the time he left Springfield to the day of 
his death.” 

Mrs. Lincoln also made a similar statement when she visited 
Springfield after the President’s death. She declared that Mr. 
Lincoln never thought of the subject of Christianity. She said 
one of Mr. Lincoln’s maxims, and which he frequently used, 
was, “What is to be will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest; 
the decree,” which effectually sets aside the Christian idea of 
the efficacy of prayer. 

In addition to these proofs may be added the positive state¬ 
ments made by Schuyler Colfax in a lecture he delivered on 
Lincoln, under the auspices of Sela Lodge, No. 24, I. O. G. T., 
in Hanson Place Methodist Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., March 25, 
1876, and which was also delivered in other localities. That he 
is a respectable Christian authority cannot be denied. He 
examined Mr. Lincoln’s political character, his ability as a 
statesman, his patriotism and intense love of country, his 
patience, his simplicity of character, and his great love of 
humor. These all come in for full consideration. He described 


775 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

how the mental burdens which weighed upon Mr Lincoln’s 
mind depressed him and made him gloomy at times, and which 
state of mind was often indicated by his careworn features. He 
also related several amusing anecdotes of Mr. Lincoln. Upon 
the subject of Mr. Lincoln’s religious views he expressly said, 
while Mr. Liucoln possessed a marked religious nature and 
much fervidness of feeling, he was not a believer in the Chris¬ 
tian religion. He stated that he had held conversations re¬ 
peatedly with Mr. Lincoln upon the subject and knew liis sen¬ 
timents well. This evidence must be taken as conclusive. 

Abraham Lincoln was eminently an honest and good man, 
and these excellent qualities in his character certainly did not 
proceed from any faith or confidence in Christian or Pagan 
dogmas. He was one of nature’s true noblemen, whose good 
acts and whose commendable conduct did not arise from any 
supposed fealty to antiquated errors and superstitions. 

In Henry J. Ptaymond’s “ Life of Lincoln ” he made this 
estimate of the noble Illinoisan: “ He maintained through the 
terrible trials of his administration, a reputation, with the great 
body of the people, for unsullied integrity of purpose and of 
conduct, which even Washington did not surpass, and which no 
President since Washington has equaled. He had command of 
an army greater than that of any living monarch; he wielded 
authority less restricted than that conferred by any other con¬ 
stitutional government; he disbursed sums of money equal to 
the exchequer of any nation in the w r orld, yet no man, of any 
party, believes him in any instance to have aimed at h's own 
aggrandizement, to have been actuated by personal ambition, or 
to have consulted any other interest than the welfare of his 
country and the perpetuity of its republican form of govern¬ 
ment. This of itself is a success which may well challenge 
universal admiration, for it is one which is the indispensable 
condition of all other forms of success.” 

Long will it be before the grateful people of America forget 
the disinterested services and the noble manly qualities of 
Abraham Lincoln. 


776 


PROUDHON. 


PROUDHON. 

Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the famous French socialist and 
political writer, was born at Besancon in 1809. Occupied with 
rustic labors in his earliest years, he received gratuitous instruc¬ 
tion at the college of his native town, and at nineteen became a 
compositor. He was employed in various printing offices till 
1837, but had found time to think and study, and make con¬ 
siderable acquirements. The sense of the inequality of condi¬ 
tions among men, and of the social stigma attached to poverty, 
early weighed on his mind, and gave permanent direction to 
his speculations and endeavors. In 1840, after several small 
works, appeared his famous memoir, “What is Property?” 
What is most popularly known of him is his famous reply to 
this question, to wit: — “Property is Robbery.” A second 
memoir on the same subject exposed him to a prosecution, but 
he was acquitted. 

In 1848, after the revolution of February, Proudhon became 
editor of “The Representative of the People,” and attracted 
great attention and popularity by his articles; so that, in June, 
he was chosen member of the Constituent Assembly for the 
department of the Seine. He made a motion which a large 
majority of the Assembly rejected as “an odious attack on 
public morality and subversive of the rights of property.” 
Finding no more hearing at the tribune, he therefore started a 
newspaper under the title of “The People,” which was sup¬ 
pressed and reappeared three times. In 1849, he founded his 
People's Bank, but being soon after sentenced, under the press 
laws, to three years’ imprisonment and a fine, he left France, 
and the bank was closed by the government. Returning a few 
months later, he submitted to his sentence, and was only lib¬ 
erated in 1852. For a pamphlet directed against the govern¬ 
ment of Napoleon III. and the Romish Church, in 1858, he was 
aga'n sentenced to a fine and imprisonment, on which he re¬ 
tired to Brussels, where he remained till his death in 1865. 


PROUDHON. 


777 


Besides his principal work, which has just been translated 
into English, Proudhon wrote “The Solution of the Social 
Problem,” a “System of Contradictions in Political Economy,” 
and the “Creation of Order.” 

A distinguished American philosopher, the acknowledged 
leader of the school of “ Individual Sovereignty,” thus writes 
of Proudhon : — “ Ilis startling epigrammatic thunderbolt, prop* 
erty is robbery , aroused, bewildered, and repelled all Europe. 
Perhaps not a dozen persons from his time till now have ever 
studied him severely enough to understand exactly what he 
meant. It is just possible that he did not quite understand 
himself, and that if he had done so, he would never have put 
his statement in that form. . . . Let us see what he meant 

by property. He did not mean possession, enjoyment, usufruct 
of the land, and of the products of labor. These he contrasts 
wi h ‘ property ’ and maintains and defends. What he means 
by property is that subtle fiction which makes that mine or 
thine of which we are out of possession, for which we have no 
present use, but which by this subtle tie we may recall at our 
option, using it, in the meantime, to subjugate others to our 
service, by taking increase for its use in the form of rent, inter¬ 
est, and the like. He uses the term property, therefore, in a 
very rigorous and technical sense; and unless this Is constantly 
borne in mind, he is certain to be misunderstood, and the truth 
which he is representing will be lost sight of. ‘Possession,’ he 
says, ‘is a right; property is against right.’—It is, however, not 
true that property, even so restricted in definition, is robbery, 
pure and simple.” 

Space will not allow us to notice Proudhon’s parodoxical use 
of the word “anarchy;” his assumption that there has been a 
primitive state of social equality, from which we fell, and to 
which we are to elevate ourselves; and several other points of 
his social philosophy. In the language of the appreciative 
critic just quoted, “now that we have this book in English, it 
should go into every library; should be consulted, and, if 
leisure permits, read by every student of these high questions: 
and should be prized as a contribution to the evolution of 
thought in this line.” 


778 


HEN BY 0. WEIGHT. 


HENRY 0. WRIGHT. 

Foremost among those who have unselfishly toiled to leave 
the world better than they found it, whose life and character 
deserve a heartfelt tribute from every lover of equal rights and 
human progress, is the subject of this brief memoir. His 
unwearied labors and sacrifices in the cause of freedom and 
humanity, and his multitudinous testimonies against wrong and 
outrage on both sides of the Atlantic, place him among those 
whose memories deserve the warmest benedictions of their fel¬ 
lows. He was one of the staunchest veterans in the cause of 
free inquiry and religious liberty at home and abroad, and he 
only laid down his pen to take the platform for the advo¬ 
cacy of truth, however unpopular it might be. Cosmopolitan in 
his spirit and philanthropy, but radical beyond popular accep¬ 
tance he played no unimportant part in the great reforms 
which have been effected in both hemispheres within the last 
half century. 

Henry Clarke Wright was born in the town of Sharon, Con¬ 
necticut, August 29, 1797. Both his parents bore the name of 
Wright before marriage, and were of Puritan descent. He was 
the tenth child of a family of seven sons and four daughters. 
When he was four years old his father, a farmer, moved into 
what was then called the Western country—now central New 
York—and settled in the town of Hartwick, Otsego County. 
Here in the woods, with only one family within half a mile, 
the early education of Henry was nearly neglected. He was 
fourteen years old before he took up the study of arithmetic. 
This became his favorite study. No miser ever gloated over his 
gold as he used to contemplate the propositions he had demon¬ 
strated. He says in his autobiography that it was the study of 
arithmetic that first made him feel that there was a fixed and 
indisputable truth and reality in existence. When he saw by 
the figures on his slate that the result could not be otherwise, 
he says he has shouted for joy to feel that he had found that, 
about which there could be no perplexing uncertainty. 


IIENItl C. WEIGHT. 


779 


At the age of seventeen lie went to Norwich to learn the 
hatter’s trade. His term of apprenticeship lasted four years. 
When twenty years old he became converted during a revival 
of religion and joined the Presbyterian Church. After he had 
learned his trade he went to school six months, and then 
returned to his father’s house. Kis family and friends were 
anxious for him to prepare himself for the ministry. After 
much consideration he decided to be a hatter instead of a priest. 
But being unable to find work, the hat trade having become 
quite dull in consequence of the immense importations from 
England at the close of the war, in 1815, he concluded to com¬ 
mence studying for the ministry. 

In 1819 he entered Andover Theological Seminary. During 
the first year he read and translated the whole Hebrew Testa¬ 
ment for his own use. During his two years stay at Andover 
he studied eighteen hours a day, Sundays and vacations not 
excepted. His only diet during this period was two crackers 
and half a pint of milk three times a day. 

In 1822 he received hi3 license to preach, married, and set¬ 
tled at Newburyport, Mass. He officiated as an ordained, hired 
minister till June 1833. During this time he became acquainted 
with Garrison and espoused the Abolition cause, a^d also that 
of Total Abstinence. In his autobiography he says. “In 1833 
I set myself in earnest to bring Christian truth to bear on 
men, and to remove individual social evils. I have had the 
world for my parish, ever since, and all men for my parish¬ 
ioners.” 

June 9, 1833 he asked for, and obtained, a dismission from 
the Church, From this time to November 1834 he visited most 
of the largest villages and towns in New England, mingling 
with children in schools and meetings, and raising funds for 
the establishment of schools in the slave states. Ho soon after 
settled in Boston as a children’s minister and a minister of 
the poor. 

In 1835 he joined the Anti-slavery Society, in which he con¬ 
tinued an effeient worker until the accomplishment of emanci¬ 
pation. He visited Scotland in 1847, where the most of his 
Autobiography was written. After his return to America he 
passed the remainder of his life advocating, both with tongue 


780 


HENRY C. WEIGHT. 


and pen, the Temperance Reform, Woman’s Suffrage, and Spir¬ 
itualism as a Harmonial Philosophy. He died at the farm 
house of Isaac C. Kenyon, Pawtucket, R. I., in 1870. Among 
his numerous writings, his “Marriage and Parentage,’’ “Errors 
of the Bible,” “A Kiss for a Blow,” and “Self-Abnegationist” 
are the best known to the American public. 

The following sentence, written while an evangelical minister 
in 1828, gives the key to his whole life: “I know that I love 
human beings, and love to see them good and happy. I can 
walk fearlessly and confidingly down into the great future, to 
meet whatever awaits me there. I can meet, with serene brow, 
whatever may befall me, but I cannot calmly see others suffer 
and pass away, when they shrink in horror from the future. Is 
that machinery of another world with which Religionists appall 
their own souls and those of others, a reality, or is it a phan¬ 
tasy of the brain ? I wish everybody was good and happy now, 
then the future would be all bright.” 

Although for a time an ordained clergyman, he burst the 
trammels that bound him, as Samson did the withes of the 
Philistines, and fearlessly denounced the current corrupt and 
ceremonial religions, and their worthless, recreant priesthoods. 
Personally he had no enemies. His long, laborious, and self- 
sacrificing life was, as it were, but a response to the sentiment, 
“My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind.” 
He was the uncompromising foe of corruption in Church and 
State. Frankness, plain-dealing, and an absorbing love of truth 
were his chief characteristics. His name is a synonym of justice 
and fidelity to the well-being of universal man. Ever ready to 
brave any danger to himself, making the sufferings and disa¬ 
bilities o[ others his own, he never relaxed his efforts to secure 
better conditions and nobler lives on earth. Henry C. Wright 
was one of those men so rare in all ages, who have dared to do 
right in the face of scorn, who have hazarded reputation, the 
sympathy of friends, and the admiration of the world, rather 
than violate a conviction of duty. His purposes were high and 
holy, and his life labors were on the broadest scale of human 
brotherhood. 


MARGARET FULL Ell. 


781 


MARGARET FULLER. 


Sarah Margaret Fuller was born at Cambridgeport, in 
Massachusetts, May 23, 1810. Her talents, rare individuality of 
character, and untimely death, have given to her history a 
peculiar and tragic interest. Under the care of her father, a 
lawyer and member of Congress, she was early and thoroughly 
instructed in the classics. It is related that he used to say of 
her, while still a child, that she knew more Latin and Greek 
than half the professors. While still quite young she had also 
made great proficiency in French and Italian. 

After the death of her father, in 1835, slie became teacher of 
languages in Boston, and subsequently principal of a school at 
Providence, Bhode Island. In 1839 she published a translation 
of Eckermann’s “Conversations with Goethe.” In 18-10 she 
became editor of the “Dial” — a periodical instituted for the 
advocacy and diffusion of Transcenden alism in America, and 
for which she wrote a number of admirable articles on literature 
and art. Her critique on Goethe, especially, in the second 
volume of the “Dial,” has been greatly and deservedly praised. 

Her “Summer on the Lakes,” a vivid and truthful picture of 
prairie-life, was published in 1843. Soon after she took charge 
of the literary department of the “New York Tribune.” In 
1846 she visited England, where she made the acquaintance of 
Carlyle and other eminent men. From London she journeyed 
through France to Italy. 

At Home she accidentally became acquainted with the Mar¬ 
quis Ossoli, to whom, though many years younger than herself, 
she was married in December, 1847. She took 1 he deepest inter¬ 
est in the cause of Italian liberty, and during the siege of 
Borne, in 1849, devoted herself with untiring assiduity to the 
care of the sick and wounded. In May, 1850, she and her hus¬ 
band set sail for America; but, a violent storm having arisen 
when they were near the coast of the United States, the vessel 
struck on Fire Island beach, Long Island, in the morning of 


782 


MARGARET,FULLER. 


the 16t,h of July, and a few hours after went to pieces. Among 
those who perished were the Marquis and Marchioness Ossoli 
and their child! 

In 1832, writing to a friend on the subject of religious faith, 
she said: — “I have not formed an opinion; I have determined 
not to form settled opinions at present; loving or feeble nature* 
need a positive religion — a visible refuge, a protection—as 
much in the jjassionate season of youth as in those stages 
nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is not 
superior to any feelings I have yet experienced; my affection 
is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving 
assistance or sympathy.” Later in life she became a religious 
transcendentalist of the most spirituelle type, as far removed 
from orthodoxy as from Atheism. 

“The writings of Margaret Fuller possess a lasting value, 
and wi’l continue to be read for their wit and wisdom, 'when 
those of her more ambitious companions are forgotten. For 
she treated ever-recurring themes in a living w T ay — vigorous and 
original, but human. Her taste was educated by study of the 
Greek classics, and she had the appreciation of form that 
belongs to the literary order of mind. Her writings are not for 
those who read as they run, but for those who read for instruc¬ 
tion and suggestion.” But the magnificent “cloth of gold” of 
these works is so threaded through and through with purity, 
liberty, Freethought, and Cultured Infidelity, that those who 
run may read therein the very finest sentiments and doctrines 
which the human head and heart are capable of entertaining. 


THEODORE PARKER. 


783 


THEODORE PARKER. 

On the twenty-fourth of August, 1810, at Lexington, Massa¬ 
chusetts, was born one of the most distinguished American 
scholars and rationalistic theologians. His education was begun 
on his father’s farm, and there he continued to carry on his 
studies even after he had entered his name at Harvard in 1830. 
He appears to have visited Cambridge only for the purpose of 
participating in the examinations. 

In 1834 he entered the theological school, in which he 
remained about two years. He first began to preach at Barns¬ 
table in 1836. In April, 1837, he married Miss Lydia D. Cabot, 
and soon after was settled as Unitarian minister at West Rox- 
bury. His views had previously been but little in advance of 
the average Unitarianism of the time. But as he grew more 
and more acquainted with the German Rationalists Eichhorn, 
Be Wette, Paul us, Bauer, and others, it was not long before an 
important change in his theological opinions was produced — a 
change, we need scarcely say, which he was at no pains to con¬ 
ceal. Some of the more conservative New England Unitarians 
were greatly offended at his new doctrines. The opposition to 
him culminated after his discourse (preached at South Boston 
in 1841) on the “Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” in 
which he declared the absolute humanity of Christ —his inspi¬ 
ration differing in no essential respect from that of other men. 
This same spirit of opposition was conspicuously manifested on 
the occasion of his exchanging pulpits with other Unitarian 
ministers, some of whom were severely censured by many of 
their brethren, who held that by such an interchange of court¬ 
esies they gave a direct sanction to the new heresies. 

In the early part of 1813 appeared Parker’s translation of Be 
Wette’s “Introduction to the Old Testament.” Later in the 
same year he visited Europe, returning in the summer of 1844. 
Soon after his return he began to preach in Boston, at the 
Melodeon, where he was regularly installed in 1846. 


784 


THEODORE PARKER. 


In 1847 the “Massachusetts Quarterly Review” appeared. 
Or this excellent magazine he was the principal editor, during 
its short life of three years. In addition to his ministerial and 
editorial duties, and his other laborious intellectual pursuits, 
which extended to almost every department of human knowl¬ 
edge, he gave numerous lectures on various political and social 
topics, and was the correspondent of many eminent men; among 
them Charles Sumner, Buckle, Professor Gervinus, etc. 

But the question of all questions which seems to have en¬ 
listed most fully all the faculties of his ardent and powerful 
mind was Southern slavery, with its attendant iniquities and 
abominations. He distinguished himself as the fearless oppo¬ 
nent of the Fugi ive Slave Law, and sheltered slaves in his own 
house. His moral courage, especially during the “Anthony 
Burns” and “ Webster-Parkman ” excitements, rose to the 
heights of the sublime antique. He, of almost all the ministers 
of Boston, was ever found “faithful among the faithless,” when 
public iniquity and wickedness in high places stalked unblush- 
ingly through the land, and especially through his adopted 
city. 

His earliest published work was the “Discourse of Matters 
pertaining to Religion.” In this work alone he exhibits his 
fundamental principles in a systematic form. It has been 
widely read n Europe, as well as in America, and is one of the 
most important and interesting of recent contributions to relig¬ 
ious philosOi liy — one of the books which are worth reading for 
their honesty, earnestness, and beauty, whether we agree or 
disagree with their conclusions. 

His health having become greatly impaired by his unceasing 
and intense activity, in February, 1859, he visited the island of 
Santa Cruz, in the West Indies, and in the following summer 
went to Europe, spending the winter of 1859-GO at Rome. He 
left Rome in April, 1860, and with difficulty reached Florence, 
where he died on the tenth of May. 

Of his extensive collection of books, he left the principal 
part, amouming to 11,190 volumes and 2,500 pamphlets, to the 
Boston Public Library. His “Life and Correspondence,” edited 
by John Weiss, appeared in 1863. Another excellent “Life ” has 
lately been published, by O. B. Frothingham. 


CHARLES SUMNER. 


783 


CHARLES SUMNER, 

This American statesman and orator was born in Boston, 
January G, 1811. He graduated at Harvard College in 1830, after 
which he was a pupil of Judge Story in the law school of 
Cambridge. He was admitted to the bar in 1S34, after which 
ho practiced in the Boston Courts. From 1834 to 1837 ho pub¬ 
lished three volumes entitled “Sumner’s Reports,” edited “The 
American Jurist,” and in the absence of Judge Story lectured 
to the students of the law school of Cambridge. 

Ho passed three years in a visit and travels in Europe, from 
1837 to 1840. On the 4tli of July, 184", he pronounced an oration 
in Boston on “The True Grandeur of Nations,” which attracted 
much attention in this country and in Europe. His argument 
was designed to promote the cause of peace. He opposed the 
annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845. Up to this 
time he had been allied with the Whig party, but now he 
severed himself from it and worked with the Free-Soilers. He 
supported Martin Van Buren for President in 1848. He delivered 
numerous orations and discourses on various subjects in various 
localities in 1850. 

By a coalition of Democrats and Free-Soilers he was, in 1850, 
elected to the Senate of the United States, successor c f Daniel 
Webster, deceased. He opposed the Fugitive slave bill by a 
strong speech in the Senate, and took a prominent part in the 
Elansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. On the 19th and 20tli of May, 
1856, he made in the Senate an eloquent speech on the contest 
in Kansas and on the encroachment of the slave-power. Some 
of the passages of this speech excited the anger of Preston S. 
Brooks, a Member of Congress from South Carolina, who, with¬ 
out warning, on the 22d of May, assaulted Mr. Sumner while 
sitting in his seat in the Senate Chamber, and beat him over 
the head until he was unconscious. Mr. Sumner was so severely 
injured that he was disabled from public service for several 
years* He sailed for Europe in March, 1857, for his health and 


786 


CHARLES SUMNER. 


for the purpose of consulting eminent European physicians in 
regard to his injuries. While he was still in Europe he was 
almost unanimously reelected to the Senate. In the fall of 1857 
he returned home; and in the following Spring made another 
yoyage to Europe and remained over a year under the treatment 
of Brown-Sequard, and other medical men in Paris. In 1859 
he again returned home and resumed his seat in the Senate, 
though he sti’l suffered from the brutal attack that was made 
upon him. In fact, to the hour of his death ho suffered more 
or less from the effects of those merciless blows. 

He was appointed Chairman on the Committee of Foreign 
Relations in March, 1861, and near the close of 1862 was again 
elected to six years more in the Senate. In a series of resolu¬ 
tions which he offered on the eighth of February, 1864, he 
affirmed that “any system of reconstruction must be rejected 
which does not provide by irreversible guarantees against the 
continued existence or possible revival of slavery.” After the 
close of the civil war he advocated the reconstruction of the 
seceded States on the basis of impartial suffrage. During the 
Rebellion he he was a confidential adviser of President Lincoln, 
who in April, 1865, but a few days before his assassination, said 
to Mr. Sumner: “There is no person with whom I have more 
advised throughout my administration than yourself.” Among 
his important services was the production of the Freedmen’s 
Bureau Bill. He was chairman of the Committee of Foreign 
Relations for nearly ten years, and had the proud satisfaction 
of witnessing the triumph of the principles he had so long and 
strenuously advocated. In April, 1869, he made an able and 
elaborate speech on the “Alabama Claims,” which, however, did 
not give full satisfaction in London. His complete works, eight 
volumes, were published in 1870. 

Sumner was eminently a literary man and a statesman. 
Upon theological subjects, he was quiet and unobtrusive, but by 
his friends he -was well known to be an unbeliever in the Chris¬ 
tian dogmas and in the nature and claims of a revealed relig¬ 
ion. He disbelieved in supernaturalism, and recognized only 
the existence of the Universe with its laws and forces. 


HORACE GREELEY. 


737 


HORACE GREELEY. 

This distinguished journalist, Reformer and Thinker, was 
born at Amherst, New Hampshire, in February, 1811. His father 
Was a farmer, and moved into Vermont, when Horace was ten 
years old. The young white-headed boy learned the art of 
printing at East Poultney, Vt., where he worked from 1826 to 
1830, and seemed very naturally to take to politics. He espoused 
the Anti-Mason party, which at that time attracted much atten¬ 
tion. He was a warm partisan, and afterwards became a leader 
of the great Whig party. He left the Green Mountain State 
and went as far West as Erie, Pa., where he worked a while as 
compositor, when he made his way to New York City, where 
he arrived in August, 1831, with the sum of ten dollars in his 
pocket. His dress was odd and shabby, and his manners awk¬ 
ward and clownish. It is easy to understand that he met with 
many repulses and discouragements; but by dint of energy he 
at last obtained a situation as journeyman printer and worked 
fourteen months, when, in 1833, he became partner of Francis 
Story in the publication of the “ Morning Post,” the first daily 
penny paper ever published. It was, however, discontinued in a 
few weeks. In March, 1834, the firm of Greeley & Co. was 
founded, and the publication of the “New Yorker,” a literary 
weekly, was commenced. Mr. Greeley was editor. This lived 
seven years and became comparatively popular, but was not a 
remunerative enterprise. 

In 1846 Mr. Greeley married Miss Cheney of North Carolina. 
From March, 1838, to March, 1839, he edited “The Jeffersonian,” 
a weekly Whig paper, published under the direction of the 
Whig Central Committee. About May, 1840, he commenced the 
publication of “The Log Cabin,” a weekly political paper, 
which warmly supported Gen. Harrison for President. Its cir¬ 
culation reached 80,000 copies, an unprecedented number for 
that time. During the publication of this journal he acquired 
great reputation as a political writer. 


788 


HORACE GREELEY. 


In April, 1841, he founded. “The Daily Tribune,” price one 
cent. It gradually increased in circulation and influence, until 
with the weekly and semi-weekly editions it became an immense 
power for the formation of public opinion in the country. It was 
several times enlarged and with increasing influence. Besides 
being the leading Whig paper in the United States, it advocated 
many reforms, and used its influence in bettering the condition 
of the human race. 

In 1850 he published his “Hint3 towards Deform,” a volume 
of rare value, and composed of lectures delivered in various 
localities upon temperance, labor, reform, popular education, 
etc. “His subject,” says Barton, “is ever the same; the object 
of his public life is single. It is the Emancipation of Labor; 
its enunciation from ignorance, vice, servitude, poverty.” 

In 1851 he visited Europe, and after his return he published 
“Glances at Europe.” He supported Henry Clay for President 
in 1844, General Taylor in 184S, General Scott in 1862, John C. 
Ereemont in 1856, and Lincoln in 1860 and 1861. Upon the dis¬ 
solution of the Whig party and the formation of the [Republi¬ 
can party in 1856 he acted a very prominent part, and became 
one of the most ardent opponents of slavery in the country. 
In 1848 he was elected to Congress to fill an unexpired term. 
He served in that capacity one year. 

In 1864 he published the first volume of the American Con¬ 
flict,” the second volume following in due time. This elaborate 
work met with an extensive sale. His “ Becollections of a 
Busy Life” (1868), has been widely read and greatly appreciated. 
In May, 1867, he offered himself as bail for Jefferson Davis, for 
which he was censured by many of his party friends. 

In 1872 he was nominated for President by the Democratic 
party, but after an active canvass on the part of himself and 
friends, he fell far short of an election. Many who had pre¬ 
viously belonged to the same party with him, deemed his course 
in becoming the candidate for the party he had all his life 
opposed, as singular, to say the least, and large numbers of 
them refused to support him in his new role. The defeat was 
doubtless a heavy blow to him, and it so preyed upon his mind 
as to seriously affect it. He became unable to sleep, and in a 
short time he became insane, and November 29, 1872, he died. 


HORACE GREELEY. 


789 


aged sixty-one years. He had naturally a healthy constitution, 
and although he had done an incalculable amount of mental 
and physical labor through his busy life, it is probable he would 
have lived many years longer had it not been for the prostrated 
mental condition into which his defeat threw him. His sensi¬ 
tive nature sank under it and was not able to recuperate. 

In many respects Greeley was a great man. He could ac¬ 
complish more editorial work within a given time than many 
among thousands. He overtaxed himself excessively. He was 
a humanitarian in the widest sense of the term. He advocated 
such measures, and such only, as he believed would benefit 
the public. His sympathy for his kind was unbounded. He 
was strictly honest in purpose and persistent in energy. 

His mind and incentives were ever alive to such measures as 
he believed would be a benefit to mankind. His motives were 
pure; his intentions of the noblest character. The thoughts 
which he put upon paper will live for centuries. The results 
he accomplished in journalism will long be the pride of the 
American nation. His life was truly a busy one. He abounded 
in actions and deeds, and they were always of the first charac¬ 
ter. His compeer, C. A. Dana, appropriately styled him “Our 
later Franklin.” In many respects a similarity exists between 
Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley. 

In religion he was only a partial Liberal or Infidel; he dis¬ 
carded the belief in Hell and the Devil, regarding them as most 
monstrous inventions and absurdities, but he retained more or 
less confidence in revealed religion, and adhered to some of 
the superstitions of the Church. It has been said Universalism 
and Unitarianism are only half-way stations on the great high¬ 
way between superstition and absolute truth: Mr. Greeley 
reached one of these stations, and that is about as far as he was 
able to get. 


f 


790 


EMMA MAE TIN. 


EMMA MARTIN. 


This accomplished English lady and Freethinker was born 
at Bristol in 1812. She early evinced remarkable intellectual 
powers, and an enthusiasm and an emotional nature which 
often culminates in strong religious feeling. Indeed, in the 
early portion of her life she remained firmly attached to tho 
prevailing religious belief. 

The nature of her opinions may be gathered from the follow¬ 
ing passage, written by her in her twenty-fourth year in the 
“Bristol Magazine,” of which she was the editor: “Infidelity 
is the effusion of weak minds, and the resource of guilty ones. 
Like the desolating simoon of the desert, it withers everything 
within its reach, and as soon as it has prostrated the morality 
of the individual, it invades the civil rights of society.” As 
illustrating her radical change of opinions within the next few 
years, the following is here given from her “Seventh Weekly 
Address to the Inhabitants of London: ” “ When Christianity 
arose, it gathered to its standard the polished Greek, the rest¬ 
less Boman, the barbarous Saxon, but it was suited only to the 
age in which it grew. It had anathemas for the bitter-hearted 
to hurl at those they chose to designate ‘God’s enemies.’ It 
had promises for the hopeful, cautions for the prudent, charity 
for the good. It was all things to all men. It became the 
grand leader—of the ascetic to the convent, of the chivalrous 
to the crusade, of the cruel to the star-chamber, of the scholar 
to the secret midnight cell, there to feed on knowledge, but 
not to impart it. But at last its contentional doctrines made 
men look elsewhere for peace — for some less equivocal moral¬ 
ity, some clearer doctrines, some surer truth.” 

For the remainder of her life she was distinguished as an 
able and earnest advocate of Freethought in the anti-religious 
field. It was also one of the purposes of her public life to 
advocate and illustrate the principles of Socialism. She felt 
that women should exercise a wider influence in public affairs. 


EMMA MARTIN. 


791 


Not limiting herself to asserting the principle, she acted it out, 
modestly and resolutely. "Wise to see that the rights of women 
would never be conceded unless exercised, she exercised them, 
and thus, by practical argument, she aided to win them. 

She had married at quite an early age; but unfortunately 
her husband proved to be a man whose company she found 
could be endured only with humiliation. She was finally forced 
to separate from him after she had become the mother of three 
children. Though some have sought to cast reproach upon her 
memory for this, it appears that her conduct was so justifiable, 
that even her religious acquaintances could find no fault with 
it. After a long and trying season of struggles to support her¬ 
self and children unaided, she was united to another husband, 
a worthy gentleman named Joshua Hopkins. In all the priest- 
made marriages, there has never been one more honorable, nor 
" one in which happiness was more perfect, or blest by purer 
affection. 

Emma Martin was one of the few among the early advocates 
of English Socialism, and was thus cut off from all hope or sym¬ 
pathy from her former connections. But ever distinguishing 
between liberty and license, she frankly avowed her thoroughly 
sincere and innocent Social theory, and modestly and consist¬ 
ently exemplified it in her noble and irreproachable life. 

A year or two previous to her death she suffered much from 
consumption. The story of her death is thus told by Mr. G. J. 
Holyoake: “When in London a fortnight before her death, I 
devoted one of the four days of my stay in town to a visit to 
Finchley. As we entered the room (Mrs. Holyoake was with 
me) Mrs. Martin wept. It was impossible not to see that suf¬ 
fering had made fatal inroads upon her when she, so unused 
to tears, wept at the sight of friends. I never saw her look so 
beaut ful. Her dark black eyes were radiant with fire, and the 
hectic vermilion which suffused her cheeks, imparted a super¬ 
natural beauty to her expression. Strauss’ ‘ Life of Jesus ’ lay 
on her bed. She had the second volume in her hand. She 
said she had been examining it, and she conversed about it 
critically for some minutes —when her intermittent breath per¬ 
mitted. . . . She died eight days after. (October, 18”1). Some 
time before she explained to me particulars she wished ob- 


792 


EMMA MARTIN. 


served in case of her death, and she stipulated that her likes 
and dislikes should be respected at her grave. Neither from 
persons nor societies who had neglected her, or had been un¬ 
friendly to her, would she accept attention when dead which 
had been withheld while living [her courage and independence 
never forsaking her]. These requests were strictly fulfilled, and 
as she wished me to speak at her grave, I did so.” 

She was buried in Highgate cemetery. She left behind her 
four daughters. Space does not admit Of a detailed mention of 
her writings. Her works throughout, from the first, “The 
Exiles of Piedmont,” to the last “God’s Gifts and Men’s 
Duties,” are characterized by a force of personal thought, and 
a strength and brevity of expression unusual in the writings of 
women. She also became distinguished as a lecturer; and as 
such, perhaps no woman, except Frances Wright, is to be com¬ 
pared with her. For the instruction condensed in them, the earn¬ 
estness of style, and thoroughness of view, her lectures are con¬ 
sidered as models by unprejudiced critics. As an authoress, 
but one other woman is to be compared with her, and that is 
one whose name is an affectionate household word in every 
land where English is read — Harriet Martineau. 

The following words of eulogy pronounced at her grave by 
Mr. Holyoake signify vastly more than the utterances of admi¬ 
ration and friendship, by all familiar with the sweet, pure life 
and character of Emma Martin: “To her own party she was 
an inspiration, and had more leisure and means been allotted 
to her, her resources and invention would have added largely 
to its influence. She would have been our Madame Boland, 
whom she greatly admired and much resembled in character, 
talent and the ambition of a wise empire. Thanks to her exer¬ 
tions, 1 he reign has been shortened of that Betaliative Theology 
which, like a dark cloud, spreads itself over existence, and 
obscures the sunlight of human duty. Ah! what do wo not 
owe to a woman, who, like Emma Martin, teaches us in her 
last hour, the truth of a gentler faith?” 


CHARLES SOUTHWELL. 


793 


CHARLES SOU T11W E L L 


Charles Southwell deserves an honored place among the 
illustrious Infidels of England who have dared and suffered 
persecution for the sake of unpopular truth. lie justly ranks 
among the ablest and most active champions of the cause of 
mental freedom of the present century. He was born in 1814 to a 
life of poverty, s'ruggles and difficulties. Ho was early thrown 
upon Ills own resources, and during his earlier years of appren¬ 
ticeship his wages were miserable and insufficient to provide 
the merest necessaries of life. His relatives appear to have 
been either too poor or too selfish to trouble ^themselves about 
him, and so ho was suffered to struggle on through the years 
of his youth amidst a host of constantly increasing difficulties 
and discouragements. It is related that one of his brothers 
offered him a home, which his love of unrestrained personal 
liberty would not suffer him to accept. Charles Southwell 
could never be under obligations to any one. 

He confesses that at thirteen years of age he belonged to the 
class of persons described by Lord Bacon us so fond of liberty 
that they would not consent to wear waistbands. Through his 
life he experienced but few of the world’s comforts. 

Mr. Southwell took an active part in the great Theological 
agitation and Reform of 1841-2. He was foremost in the reform¬ 
atory work of his time, the advocacy of which required courage 
and audacity. His imprisonment in an English jail for opinion’s 
sake Serves to show his moral heroism. While in the jail at 
Bristol he was strenuously urged by the chaplain to make the 
Christian religion his chief study. That lie had already done 
this appears from the following extract of a published letter to 
the Rev. Hugh M’Neile, D. D. 

“I most solemnly assure you I would avow myself a Chris¬ 
tian, could I do so with sincerity. You must be aware that 
neither our feelings nor our opinions are at our dis’W«H TTT ~ 
cannot love that which is. ^ - 


794 


CHABLES SOUTHWELL. 


odious to us — we cannot hate those things or beings which 
cause in us delightful emotions —neither can any human being 
think a religion true by any mere desire on his or her part to 
do so. You must be aware that there is no more virtue in 
belief than vice in disbelief—not one jot more of merit, for 
example, in believing Christianity is the only true religion, 
than demerit in believing, as millions do sincerely believe, that 
Allah is great, and that Mohammed is his prophet. I have 
carefully studied the Bible. I have read the most famous 
books which have been written by priest or layman in favor of 
systematic Christianity — yet am still an unbeliever. 

I hope no one will be so fanatical as to be angry with me for 
ferreting from Christian records the chief difficulties of Chris¬ 
tianity—especially when it is considered that I invite you to 
solve these difficulties, and thereby cure me of my unbelief. ” 

Mr. Southwell was an able advocate of English Socialism, 
though very far from being what was termed an Owenite. 
Indeed, he was often a persistent opposer of Mr. Owen’s meas¬ 
ures. For many years he was the sole proprietor of the “ Auck¬ 
land Examiner,” New Zealand, which expired three weeks before 
himself. In the last number ho published his own funeral ser¬ 
mon. These funeral words in the last number of his paper had 
such an effect upon his fellow townsmen, that immediately a sub¬ 
scription was started in his behalf, and two hundred pounds was 
raised to relieve his pecuniary embarrassment. Two years 
before his death he was obliged to give up business, and to 
travel for the benefit of his health; but his bodily infirmity 
steadily increased. He continued, however, an uncompromising 
worker in every worthy and noble cause of reform, even while 
nearing the verge of eternity. At last death came in consump¬ 
tion’s ghastly form, and closed the career of as true and fear¬ 
less a Liberal as England has ever produced. 

The following obituary notice is taken from the “Southern 
Cross,” a newspaper published at Auckland, New Zealand, of 
the date of September 1, I860: — 

“Died, on the 7th ult. at h!s residence, Wyngarton Villa, 
Symonds Street, after a severe and lingering illness, Mr. Charles 
Southwell, aged forty-six years.” 


THOMAS INMAN. 


795 


THOMAS INMAN. 

On May 3, 1876, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, died Thomas 
Inman, M.D., of London. He was the only brother of Mr. 
Inman, one of the principal owners of the well-known steam¬ 
ship line plying between England and America. His profes¬ 
sional life was one of the most untiring industry. He wa3 
Consulting Physician to the Koyal Infirmary, Liverpool; Lec¬ 
turer successfully on Botany, Medical Jurisprudence, Materia 
Medica and Therapeutics; President of the Liverpool Literary 
and Philosophical Society; and author of half a dozen excellent 
treatises on Hygienic, Medical, and Scientific subjects, besides 
one entitled “ Foundation for a New Theory and Practice of 
Medicine.” 

But it is not with his professional works and life that we 
have to do at present. This staid, respectable, and scholarly 
member of a learned profession published besides two most 
remarkable and valuable works, entitled respectively, “Ancient 
Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” (accompanied with 
Essays on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred “Grove,” and 
on other allied Symbols), and “Ancient Faiths Embodied in 
Ancient Names: or an Attempt to trace the Beligious Belief, 
Sacred Bites, and Holy Emblems of Certain Nations, by an 
Interpretation of the names given to Children by Priestly 
Authority, or assumed by Prophets, Kings, and Hierarchs.” 
These volumes were dedicated “To Those who thirst after 
Knowledge, and are not deterred from seeking it by the fear 
of Imaginary Dangers,” and the motives for their production 
and publication are well worded in the mottoes on the fly-leaves, 
to wit; 

“Practising no evil, 

Advancing in the exercise of every virtue, 

Purifying one’s-self in mind and will; 

This is indeed the doctrine of all the Buddhas.” 

“Amongst the many wise sayings which antiquity ascribed to 


796 


THOMAS INMAN. 


Pytliagora?, few arc more remarkable than liis division of virtue 
into two branches — to seek truth, and to do good.” 

“These were more noble Ilian those in Thessalonica, in that they 
received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the 
scriptures daily, w r liether these things were so.” 

In liis preface, the author says: — “Having already experi¬ 
enced in my own profession the advantages of attempting to 
sweep away the false practi es arising from perverted facts and 
wrong views of nature, it is natural to believe that theology 
will be equally benefited by a rigid and impartial examination 
of the claims on which it has been founded. In medicine, the 
old reasoning ran, ‘Our forefathers believed and acted thus, the 
colleges teach the same, we have learned the practice when 
young, and we stick to it when old; consequently, the practice 
of medicine, as at present adopted, must be true, because it has 
stood the test of time.’ Absurd as this is in medicine, in divin¬ 
ity the arguments are even still more puerile, and run thus, ‘It 
is written; I am taught to believe The Word; I do so, and there¬ 
fore it is true; ’ or ‘It is true, and therefore I believe it.’ ‘The 
Church is a witness for The Word , and The Word testifies to 
the Church, and both must be right.’ But a moment’s consid¬ 
eration shows that the same assertions may be applied to 
prove the truth of the Yedas, of the Koran, and of the book of 
Mormon. If faith in it is to be the test of the infallibility of 
any religious system, we must allow that the ancient Egyptians, 
Assyrians, Persians, and the modern Hindoos had and have as 
sincere a belief as we ourselves, for nothing can be more com¬ 
plete than their entire trust in their spiritual guides. We, who 
in our missionary zeal believe that our religion is superior to 
any other, liaye no scruple in trying to shake the child-like 
confidence of the Hindoo, the subtle reasoning or the Brahmin, 
or the fierce orthodoxy of the Mahometan, and to make them 
dissatisfied with their religious books. Yet we are intolerant 
of the faintest suggestion that our own faith is faulty.” “When¬ 
ever the critic finds that those principles which are called the 
holiest instincts of the mind’ are thwarted, he allows the 
wildest license to his senseless lash, and flogs unsparingly the 
author who has shaken his repose. Such castigation I antici¬ 
pate, as certainly as docs the traveler expect an eruption of 


THOMAS INMAN. 


797 


boiling water from an Icelandic geyser, whoso water he has 
ruff by throwing into them a clod of earth.” 

What Mr. Inman anticipated happened. Boiling words were 
spouted at him from clergymen and conservatives. But that 
was all. The Inquisition, be it remembered, is no more. And 
the last trial for Atheism in England happened some time ago. 
Mr. Inman did not suffer, in life, limb, position, reputation, or 
(as we suppose, he being a “hardened” medical man) even in 
feeling. After all the little tirade against him, he brought out 
his second volume of “Ancient Faiths” as if nothing had hap¬ 
pened. 

Of “Ancient Faiths ” a critical Magazine bears this excellent 
testimony: “Dr. Inman’s present attempt to trace the relig¬ 
ious belief, sacred rites, and holy emblems of certain nations, 
has opened up to him many hitherto unexplored fields of re¬ 
search, or, at least, fields that have not been over-cultivated, 
and the result is a most curious and miscellaneous harvest of 
facts. The ideas on priapism developed in a former volume 
receive further extension in this. Dr. Inman, it will be seen, 
does not fear to touch subjects usually considered sacred, in 
an independent manner, and some of the results at which he 
has arrived are such as will undoubtedly startle, if not shock, 
the orthodox. But this is what the author expects; and for this 
he has thoroughly prepared himself. In illustration of his 
peculiar views, he has ransacked a vast variety of historical 
storehouses, and with great trouble, and at considerable cost, 
he places conclusions at which he has arrived, before the world.” 

The reader should possess and read and thoroughly digest 
Mr. Inman’s excellent and splendidly illustrated works. lie, 
with Richard Payne Knight, Godfrey Higgins, Thomas Taylor, 
Westrop, Wake, and others, has completely undermined the 
structure of Christianity, with new and improved tools. For the 
present, the reader is referred to our biography of Richard 
Payne Knight, for hints and suggestions as to what line of 
thought he may expect to find in the works of the pure and 
scholarly Infidel, Thomas Inman. 


BUCKLE. 


798 


BUCKLE. 


Henry Thomas Buckle was born in Kent, England, Novem¬ 
ber 24, 1822. He early devoted himself to study, relieved by the 
relaxation of chess, at which he became one of the first players 
in the world. He is well known for his historical researches, 
and especially for his “History of Civilization in England,” the 
first volume of which appeared in 1858, and the second in 1861. 
This work caused a sensation in the world of philosophy and 
letters. Many editions of it have been published both in Eng¬ 
land and the United States. But these volumes were merely 
instalments or brilliant fragments of a great work which the 
author had designed, but which, most unfortunately, he did not 
live to complete. 

Mr. Buckle was also the author of an “Essay on Liberty,” 
and another on the “Influence of Women.” 

He died at Damascus (whither he had gone to study the lan¬ 
guages, laws, and characteristics of Oriental nations), on the 
twenty-ninth of May, 1862, at the early age of forty, And thus, 
no doubt, one of the grandest of works was cut short almost 
at the very beginning by the premature death of its author. 

Mr. Buckle had many advantages of preparation for his con¬ 
templated great work. His father being a wealthy merchant, 
he received a “liberal education;” and on his father’s death, 
in 1840, he inherited an ample fortune, which enabled him to 
indulge his fondness for books and to give himself up to liter¬ 
ary pursuits. He is also said to have formed one of the finest 
private libraries to be found in Europe. When his work ap¬ 
peared, its great boldness of thought and vigor of style were 
at once admitted, while as to its arguments and intrinsic merits 
the critics widely differed. By one class it was received with 
the warmest admiration, while by another class it was severely 
Criticised, and by some it was condemned in unmeasured terms. 
This wide diversity of opinion respecting the merits of the 
work was doubtless chiefly due to the great diversity in the pre- 


BUCKLE. 


799 


conceived views of its readers, but perhaps also in no small 
degree to the peculiar genius of the writer, who had the power 
of presenting his ideas with extraordinary distinctness and 
force, so that, however he may at times fail to convince, he 
seldom or never fails to arouse attention and awaken thought. 
Some have said that his influence upon the minds of his read¬ 
ers is owing not so much to the severity of his logic, or the 
weight of his authorities, as to the ardor of his temperament 
and the energy of his will. Those who have read his pag s 
have been compared to men listening to an earnest and gi.'ted 
orator, who carries his hearers along with him mainly by ihe 
intensity and force ol his own convictions. “His controversial 
ardor,” it has been said, “is not only a heat, but a blaze, and 
frequently dazzles the eye of his understanding.” And it has 
been contended that those alone are able to resist the fascina¬ 
tion of his genius, who, from prejudice or from philosophy, are 
predetermined not to yield, or to yield only after their reason 
is fully convinced. 

Now, we cannot see the force of these strictures. We believe 
Mr. Buckle to have been a consummate logician as well as a 
most eloquent writer. His theory respecting the predominant 
influence of physical circumstances (such as climate, food, soil, 
and general aspects of nature,) on the character of nations, is 
fast becoming the acknowledged theory among men of science. 
Anthropology, in its various departments of Physiology, Psy¬ 
chology, and Sociology, is now being studied scientifically, by 
one and the same method with Astronomy, Physics, and Chemis¬ 
try. No wonder the Church used all its influence against the 
incoming of science into the “higher walks of life,” and at 
first screamed, and swore, “and threatened like an old and 
hardened public scold.” But it w r as all in vain. Young Hercu¬ 
les-like, Science is deadlily throttling the twin serpents o! 
Superstition and Bigotry, and is destined in time to thoroughly 
cleanse the foul Augean stables of Priestcraft. And when 
Buckle so lucidly showed, from a historical point of view, thq 
tremendous influence exercised by physical laws over the organ¬ 
ization of Society, and over the charac er of individuals, no 
wonder the Church stood aghast, and has failed to recover since, 
and never will. 


800 


BUCKLE. 


In the course of his work, Mr. Buckle says: “Within the 
short space of three centuries, the old theological spirit has 
been compelled, not only to descend from its long-establ'.shed 
supremacy, but to abandon those strongholds to which, in the 
face of advancing knowledge, it has vainly atiempted to secure 
a retreat. AH its most cherished pretentions i‘: has been forced 
gradually to relinquish. . . . The accumulations of Science 
are superior to those of any former age, and offer suggestions 
of such surpassing interest, that nearly all our greatest think¬ 
ers devote to them the whole of their time, and refuse to busy 
themselves with matters of mere speculative belief. . . . The 
truth is, that the time for these things has gone by. Theologi¬ 
cal interests have long ceased to be supreme, and the affairs of 
nations are no longer regulated according to ecclesiastical 
views.” In corroboration of the above, he quotes “a writer 
intimately acquainted with the social condition of the great 
European countries” as saying: “ Ecclesiastical power is almost 
extinct as an active element in the political or social affairs of 
nations or of individuals, in the cabinet or in the family circle; 
and a new element, literary power, is taking its place in the 
government.” And he further says: “It is not surprising to 
find that many of the clergy complain of a movement so sub¬ 
versive of their own j>ower. ... It is thus that everything 
is tending to confirm the remarkable prediction of Sir James 
Mackintosh, that ‘ church power (unless some revolution, aus¬ 
picious to priestcraft, shall replunge Europe in ignorance) will 
certainly not survive the nineteenth century.’” 

Mr. Buckle, with his cultured and high-toned Infidelity, will 
ever be regarded as a chieftain of high and well-merited rank 
in the Grand Army of Freethought. He nobly fought and 
nobly fell. But his influence and deeds of prowess will ever 
live in the hearts, the memories, and the redoubled energies of 
the noble and ever-increasing Legions which he left behind 
him. 


AUSTIN HOLYOAKE. 


801 


AUSTIN IIOLYOAKE. 

This noted English Atheist was born at Birmingham in 1827, 
of poor and pious parents, who by their cheapened toil were 
obliged to meet the cares and difficulties of life and provide for 
a family of thirteen children. His brother, George Jacob, was 
ten years old when Austin was born, and gave his new brother 
his Christian name from having taken a fancy to a soldier of 
that name in his father’s employ. T..o early life of the broth¬ 
ers were given to toil, and their young and ardent spirits were 
weighed down with premature cares. 

George Jacob tells how upon one occasion, while his little 
sister was lying dangerously ill, the rector of the parish sent 
his order for his Easter due of four-pence. Poverty prevent¬ 
ing its payment, the next week a summons came demanding 
half a crown costs besides the fourpence. To save the cost of 
a warrant of distraint, which would have torn the bed from 
under the sick child, the family collected all the money they 
had, and the feeble mother left home to pay the Church dues. 
She was kept waiting for five or six hours, and when she 
returned her child was dead. Naturally the brothers grew up 
with but little respect for such a Church. 

Upon the removal of the “Oracle of Beason.” (of which 
George Jacob was one of the editors) from Gloucester to Lon¬ 
don, in conseqence of the imprisonment of two of the editors, 
Austin, then a young man of eighteen was invited thither and 
made a partner in the printing concern by his elder brother. 
They continued the publishing business together under the 
name of “Holyoake Brothers.” To the younger brother was 
entrusted the financial conduct of the concern; and the will¬ 
ingness and untiring zeal with which he not only executed 
the labors of his departments, but the devoted service he ren¬ 
dered the cause of Ereethought, w'on for him the personal 
regard of the English Secularists. 

His brother thus speaks of him: “I always regarded him 


802 


AUSTIN HOLIOAKE, 


capable of anything that ought to be done. I should never have 
attempted what I did at Fleet Street had I not been sure of 
his cooperation; and all I take most pride in of what was done 
there, could never have been accomplished without his aid. 
Military or social enterprises were alike to him, if promise of 
help appeared in them for those who struggled for independ¬ 
ence; whether patriots, or -women, or slaves. His value and 
his misfortune was, that he thought more of what he could do 
than of himself, and so wore himself out by generous exertions 
before his time; and when I looked, a few days ago, on his 
cold and silent face, as he lay in his coffin, I thought how 
many, who believed more than he, had less of his honesty of 
spirit, which must be the best recommendation to man or to 
God.” 

In 1859 he was associated with Charles Bradlaugh in the 
successful establishment of the since famous Hall of Science. 
He was an efficient fellow worker with Foote in founding the 
Secular Sunday School. He was an active member of the well- 
known old St. John Street Secular Association, and a colleague 
of Mr. Truelove, who was prosecuted and imprisoned for pub¬ 
lishing a radical political work. For upwards of twenty years 
he served the Secular cause, and the history of Freethought 
would be deficient indeed were Austin Holyoake’s name omitted. 

He died of consumption April 10, 1874. Through weeks of 
constant sickness, borne down by weakness and pain, shut 
out from all attractions of the outside world, his Freethought 
principles enabled him to manifest a patience and a heroism 
that all should be proud to emulate. He lived a useful and 
consistent life, and died a calm and heroic death. As an 
exponent of modern English Secularism, none occupy a higher 
place or more enviable distinction. Bearing a high character 
for integrity and usefulness, both in public and private life, an 
author of ripe -wisdom, and in every respect a man of eminent 
merit, and one of the most efficient and devoted of Atheistical 
propagandists, he can with pride be held up as a fair sample 
by which to judge of the relations of the doctrines he repre¬ 
sented to practical and moral life. 


WINWOOD READE. 


soa 


WINWOOD READE. 

T^e author of the “Martyrdom of Man, ” and “ The Outcast,” 
died young. He was, in every sense of the word, an extraordi¬ 
nary man. A nephew of one of the most famous English novel¬ 
ists, he did not hide his Infidel light under the bushel of mere 
novel-writing. He became a successful African traveler, and his 
two tours (1862-3 and 1868-70) in Africa gradually led him from the 
history of that strange country into writing the history of the 
world, and he found that this Universal History could be most 
truthfully divided into four periods — those of War, Religion, 
Liberty, and Intellect — and that, furthermore, it could be most 
truthfully entitled “The Martyrdom of Man.” This idea he 
worked out with consummate ability in his first book. Then 
followed “The Outcast,” a small novel in the first person, still 
further elaborating some of his peculiar points in the “Mar¬ 
tyrdom.” 

Winwood Reade’s books ought to be in the hands of every 
Liberal No one can commence reading either of them without 
being “chained to his chair” until the very last page. Copious 
extracts are given below; but the force and beauty of the works 
can only be realized by reading them through:— 

“Christianity must be destroyed. The civilized world has 
outgrown that religion, and is now in the condition of the 
Roman empire in the pagan days. A cold-hearted infidelity 
above, a sordid superstition below; a school of Plutarchs who 
endeavor to reconcile the fables of a barbarous people with the 
facts of science and the lofty conceptions of philosophy; a 
multitude of augurs who sometimes smile when they meet, but 
who more often feel inclined to sigh, for they are mostly serious 
and worthy men.” 

“ It is incorrect to say, * Theology is not a progressive sci¬ 
ence. * The worship of ancestral ghosts, the worship of pagan 
deities, the worship of a single God, are successive periods of 
progress is the science of Divinity. ... At the time of the 


804 


WINWOOD IiEADE. 


Romans and the Greeks, the Christian faith was the highest to 
which the common people could attain. A faith such as that of 
the Stoics and the Sadducees could only be embraced by culti¬ 
vated minds, and culture was then confined to a chosen few. 
But now knowledge, freedom, and prosperity are covering the 
earth; for three centuries past, human virtue has been steadily 
increasing, and mankind is prepared to receive a higher faith. 
But in order to build we must first destroy. Not only the 
Syrian superstition must be attacked, but also Ihe belief in a 
personal God, which engenders a slavish and Oriental condition 
of the mind; and a belief in a posthumous reward, which en¬ 
genders a selfish and solitary condition of the heart. These 
beliefs are, therefore, injurious to human nature. They lower 
its dignity; they arrest its development; they isolate its affec¬ 
tions. We shall not deny that many beautiful sentiments are 
often mingled with the faith in a personal Deity, and with the 
hope of happiness in a future state; yet we maintain that, how¬ 
ever refined they may appear, they are selfish at the core, and 
that if removed they will be replaced by sentiments of a nobler 
and purer kind. They cannot be removed without some dis¬ 
turbance and distress; yet the sorrows thus caused are salutary 
and sublime. ... I give to universal history a strange but 
true title — The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation the 
Human Eace has been tortured, that their children might profit 
by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies 
of the past. Is it, therefore, unjust that we also should suffer 
for the benefit of those who are to come ? Famine, pestilence, 
and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the 
Human Eace. But a season of mental anguish is at hand, and 
through this we must pass in order that our posterity may rise. 
The soul must be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. 
A sweet and charming illusion must be taken from the human 
race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return.” 

“Pain, grief, disease, and death,— are these the inventions 
of a loving God ? That no animal shall rise to excellence 
except by being fatal to the life of others —is this the law of a 
kind Creator? It is useless to say that pain has its benevo¬ 
lence ; that massacre lias its mercy. Why is it so ordained that 
bad should be the raw material of good ? Pain is not less pain 


WINWOOD READS. 


8C5 


because it is useful: murder is not less murder because it is 
conducive to development. There is blood upon the hand still , 
and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it.” This forcibly 
reminds us of the graphic saying of another honest student of 
the natural history of God: “ One hour’s excruciating pain y suf¬ 
fered by man or animal, is enough to impeach, once and for¬ 
ever, the whole Universe, or Nature, or God, call it by whatever 
name you will. Almighty Power, Wisdom, and Goodness are 
will-o’-the wisps — all vanish into thin air at one puff of pain, 
or gentlest zephyr of misery.” 

“ The body of a human individual is composed of cell-like 
bodies which are colled “physiological units.” Each cell or 
atom has its own individuality; it grows, it is nurtured, it 
brings forth young, and it dies. It is, in fact, an animalcule. 
It has its own bxly and its own mind. As the atoms are to 
the human unit, so the human units are to the human whole. 
There is only One Man upon the earth; what we call men are 
not individuals, but components; what we call death is merely 
the bursting of a cell; wars and epidemics are merely inflam¬ 
matory phenomena incident to certain stages of growth. There 
is no such tiling as a ghost or soul; the intellects of men 
resemble those instincts which inhabit the corpuscles, and 
which are dispersed when the corpuscle dies. Yet they are not 
lost; they are p v eserved within the body and enter other forms. 
Men therefore have no connection with Nature, except through 
the organism to which they belonged. Nature does not recog¬ 
nize their individual existence. But each atom is conscious of 
its life; each atom can improve itself in beauty and strength; 
each atom can, therefore, in an infinitesimal degree, assist the 
development of the Human Mind. If we take the life of a sin¬ 
gle atom, that is to say, of a single man, or if we look only at 
a single group, all appears to be cruelty and confusion; but 
when we survey Mankind as One, we find it becoming more 
and more noble, more and more divine, slowly ripening toward 
perfection. 

“The following facts result from our investigations: —Super¬ 
natural Christianity is false —God-worship is idolatry —Prayer 
is useless — The soul is not immortal —There are no rewards 
and there are no punishments in a future state.” 


806 


MORRIS ALTMAN. 


MORRIS ALTMAN. 

This ardent, earnest Liberal was born of Jewish parentage, 
in the city of New York, in the year 1837. In childhood and 
youth he had the advantages of the admirable New York com¬ 
mon school system, and acquired a good ordinary education. 
His father was a dry-goods merchant, and Morris assisted as 
clerk in his father’s store, and learned the habits of business. 
He early discarded the remnants of the Jewish faith, and was 
afterwards a Liberal of the most advanced school. On the 
death of his father and in early manhood he engaged in the 
dry-goods trade with his younger brother Benjamin, and by 
pleasing manners and close attention, they were very success¬ 
ful, and built up an extensive business. The two brothers 
remained together several years, and then dissolved partnership, 
Morris retiring. For some three years he did not engage in 
trade and gave much of his attention to Liberal literature 
and Reform measures, He read quite extensively and was 
familiar with all Freethought writers. He wrote frequently 
himself, and articles from his pen occasionally appeared in 
“The Boston Investigator,” “The Index,” and “The Truth 
Seeker.” 

In 1863 he married Mrs. Katie M. Jukes who has borne him 
four children. He lived in very comfortable style, and his 
house was a frequent stopping-place for Liberals from Europe 
and distant parts of the country when they visited New York. 
Charles Bradlaugh, Robert G. Ingersoll, B. F. Underwood, and 
others often called upon him when in the city, and always 
received the hand of welcome. 

About the year 1873 he was appointed one of the five Trus¬ 
tees of Paine Hall in Boston. He was Secretary of the Board. 
His coadjutors were Horace Seaver, J. P. Mendum, T. L. Sav¬ 
age, and J. M. Beckett. Upon the death of the latter, D. B. Burt 
was appointed in his place. To these Trustees Mr. James Lick 
deeded his mill property in Alviso, Cal., for the Paine Hall 


MORRIS ALTMAN. 


807 


fund. When the ground for the building was purchased, in 
May, 1874, the mortgage notes were sent to him to sign in a 
private capacity, and not as Trustee. On this ground he return¬ 
ed the papers unsigned, which created some degree of dissatis¬ 
faction with other members of the Board, who saw fit to ignore 
Messrs. 41t m ^n and Burt in all future affairs referring to build¬ 
ing the Hall. An estrangement consequently grew up between 
the Trustees, much to be regretted. 

In 1875 Mr. Altman again embarked in business in Sixth 
Avenue, New York. Besides doing a lively local trade, he sent 
away many goods by express to all parts of the country. He 
was noted for low prices, and customers were well pleased with 
the quality of his goods. His business gradually increased to 
the time of his death, which occurred very suddenly, July 12, 
1876, in his thirty-ninth year. The disease which took him off 
was cholera morbus, which in four or five days removed him 
from vigorous health to his death. He was conscious to the 
last, and met his fate without trepidation or fear, doubting not 
the correctness of his life-long convictions. 

To Mr. Altman’s credit it must be recorded that he was the 
first merchant in the city to take measures for lessening the 
hours of service of clerks, and he originated the movement of 
closing early on Saturday nights. Contrary to Ihe usual cus¬ 
tom in stores, he permitted his femaie clerks to sit when cus¬ 
tomers were not requiring their attention, thus affording them 
opportunities for rest. 

His sudden demise cast a gloom over all his friends and 
acquaintances. A dutiful son, an affectionate husband, a fond 
father, a warm, true friend, a devoted Liberal and Freethinker 
had suddenly passed from their midst. His employees attended 
his funeral in force, and manifested their affection for the 
deceased by wreaths, festoons, and other decorations of flowers, 
tastefully prepared for the occasion. 

He was a true friend to the author of this book, and felt not 
a little interest in the present volume. His friendship for 
“The Truth Seeker” was also marked and generous. He held 
himself in readiness to render aid in case of necessity. The 
writer cherishes his memory with feelings of gratitude. 


808 


LORD AMBER LEY. 


LORD AMBERLEY. 

Viscount Amberley, the son of Lord John Russell of Eng¬ 
land, has been dead but a few months. He died while still a 
young man. His father was a Christian, as was also his mother, 
and he was himself a Christian in his youth and early man¬ 
hood; but by a course of reading, examination, and thinking, 
he was at length compelled to change his views. He renounced 
the dogmas of Christianity and avowed himself a decided unbe¬ 
liever. In fact he wrote an elaborate work of two volumes 
octavo, containing over one thousand pages, entitled “An Analy¬ 
sis of Religious Belief,” in which he severely criticises the 
Christian religion — its origin, divinity, influence and all its 
extraordinary claims. He makes a clear case of the unauthen- 
tic origin of the system, or rather that it is copied from older 
systems that prevailed hundreds of years earlier; that the mar¬ 
velous miracles claimed for it are wholly unworthy of credit. 

It seems while Lord Amberley was writing this work his 
wifo died, and to her he dedicated it. After it was written and 
before it was published, he died himself, and his affectionate 
mother, though all her life a Christian, out of love to her 
departed child, resolved to bring out her Infidel son’s book. 

The following is the address by Lady Russell, Lord Amber- 
ley’s mother, prefixed to his volumes:— 

“ Ere the pages now given to the public had left the press, 
the hand that had written them was cold, the heart —of which 
few could know the loving depth — had ceased to beat. The 
far-ranging mind was forever still, the fervent spirit was at 
rest. Let this be remembered by those who read and add 
solemnity to the solemn purpose of the book. May those who 
find in it their most cherished beliefs questioned or contemned, 
their surest consolation set at nought, remember that he had 
not shrunk from pain and anguish to himself, as one by one he 
parted with portions of that faith, which in boyhood and early 
youth had been the mainspring of his life. Let them remem- 


LORD AMBERLEY. 


809 


ber that, however many the years granted to him on earth 
might have been, his search after truth would have ended only 
with his existence; that he would have been the first to call for 
unsparing examination of his own opinions, arguments, and 
conclusions; the first to welcome any new lights thrown by 
other workers in the same field on the mysteries of our being 
or the Universe. Let them remember that while he assails 
much that they consider unassailable, he does so in what to 
him is the cause of goodness, nobleness, love, truth, and of the 
men al progress of mankind. Let them remember that the 
utterance of that which, after earnest and laborious thought, 
he deemed to be the truth, vas to him a sacred duty; and may 
they feel as he would have felt, the justness of these words of 
a good man and unswerving Christian lately passed away, ‘A 
man’s charity to those who differ from him upon great and dif¬ 
ficult questions will be in the ratio of his own knowledge of 
them; the more knowledge, the more charity/ F. B.” 

The following is the author’s dedication of the work to his 
dead wife: — 

“With all reverence and all affection to the memory of the 
ever-lamented wife whose hearty interest in this book was dur¬ 
ing many years of ivreparatory toil, my best support; whose 
judgment as to its merits or its faults, would have been my 
most trusted guide; whose sympathy my truest encouragement; 
whose joyous welcome of the completed work I had long looked 
forward to as my one great reward; whose nature, combining in 
rare union, scientific clearness with spiritual depth, may, in 
some slight degree, have left its impress on the page, though 
far too faintly to convey an adequate conception of one whose 
religious zeal in the cause of truth, was rivaled only by the 
ardor of her humanity and the abundance of her love.” 

It is the purpose of the publisher of this volume to repro¬ 
duce, at an early date, this work of Lord Amberley’s that the 
American public may have the opportunity of reading his radi¬ 
cal utterances without paying the high price which the London 
edition costs. It is there published in two volumes octavo, con¬ 
taining over one thousand pages and sells at fifteen dollars. It 
will be reproduced in a single volume and be furnished at the 
very moderate price of three dollars. 




« 


PART IV 


LIVINO CHARACTERS [JULY, 1876]. 


THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Thomas Carlyle, the distinguished essayist and historian, was 
born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, December 4, 1795. He is there¬ 
fore past the age of eighty. Since 1832 he has resided, in mod¬ 
est style, at Chelsea, a suburb of London. He was of what is 
usually called humble origin ; that is, his parents were neither 
rich nor famous. They were, in fact, Scotch peasants of the 
better class, in an obscure locality. They were devout Presby¬ 
terians and they desired that he should become a minister of 
their Church. He was accordingly well-trained and prepared 
for the University of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age 
of fourteen, but before completing his course lie made to his 
father the sad announcement that he could not subscribe to the 
creed, and must therefore choose some other profession. He 
has himself given a graphic account of the mental struggle 
which this decision cost him. 

But although he could not enter the ministry, he retained 
and manifests in his writings, an earnest sympathy with the 
general principles of Protestant Christianity, but only so far as 
religious faith results in practical right living. 

In one of his essays he has upon this subject expressed him- 
Belf thus:—“One hears sometimes of religious controversies run¬ 
ning very high about faith, works, grace, prevenient grace, the 

811 




812 


THOMAS CAB LYLE. 


Arches Court and Essays and Reviews; into none of which do 
I enter, or concern myself with your entering. One thing I will 
remind you of, that the essence and outcome of all religions, 
creeds and liturgies whatsoever is to do one’s work in a faith¬ 
ful manner. Unhappy caitiff, what to you is the use of ortho¬ 
doxy, if with every stroke of your hammer you are breaking 
all the ten commandments,— operating upon Devil’s dust, and 
endeavoring to reap where you have not sown ? ” 

Mr. Carlyle graduated with honor at the University, at the 
age of eighteen; and after teaching for a short time entered upon 
that long and remarkable literary career which has made him, 
in the estimation of many, the most striking and original char¬ 
acter among living writers. He first became known as a trans¬ 
lator and exponent of the great German authors, for whom he 
early conceived an ardent admiration. He indeed thus opened 
up a new world of literature to the English mind, for he was a 
pioneer in this work. 

In 1824 was published his “Life of Schiller” which was fol¬ 
lowed by a translation of Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister ” and by 
biographical essays upon several other German authors. Among 
his other writings are “Sartor Resartus,” “Life of John Ster¬ 
ling,” a “History of the French Revolution,” “Heroes and 
Hero Worship,” and biographies of Frederick the Great and 
Oliver Cromwell. His miscellaneous essays, many of them of a 
biographical character, have recently been collected and pub¬ 
lished in six volumes. 

Carlyle is intense, rough, sometimes positively uncouth, but 
always striking and effective. His marked personality is appa¬ 
rent in all his writings. The honesty of his purpose, and the 
earnestness of his convictions, united with the rugged energy of 
his character, render him a most formidable, and sometimes 
indeed a most ferocious antagonist. To him the world .seems 
full of shams and hypocrisies. He is totally out of sympathy 
with the prevailing spirit of the age, a scorner of democracy 
and of universal suffrage, and equally a scorner of puppet kings 
who rule not by right of genuine worth, but by mere inherit¬ 
ance. The French Revolution of 1789 he calls “a truth clad in 
hell-fire,” thus forcibly indicating his opinion both of the evil 
thus removed by violence, and of the agency employed, A cor- 


THOMAS CARLYLE. 


813 


rupt despotism and an unbridled democracy arc to him equally 
abhorrent. 

It is not possible that Carlyle should be popular in America^ 
although his works are much read here; indeed, he found his 
first and highest appreciation on this side of the water. But he 
thinks our institutions most unwisely constituted and destined 
to sure decay. To him universal suffrage is the climax of polit¬ 
ical folly, and, in our own case, the evident cause of the Tweed- 
ism and other forms of corruption, of which we ourselves are 
just now so painfully conscious. 

Hear his short but grand sermon on Work: —“Two men I 
honor and no third. First the toil-worn craftsman, that with 
earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes 
her man’s. Venerable to me is the hard hand, crooked, coarse, 
wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefensibly 
royal, as the sceptre of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rug¬ 
ged face, ail weather-tanned, bespoiled, with its rude intelli¬ 
gence, for it is the face of a man living manlike. O, but the 
more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must 
pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated brother! For us 
was thy back so bent; for us were thy straight limbs and fin¬ 
gers so deformed; thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot 
fell, and fighting our battle wert so marred. 

“A second man I honor, and still mere highly; him who is 
seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable, not daily bread, 
but the Bread of Life. Is not he, too, in his duty endeavoring 
toward inward harmony, revealing this by act or word through 
all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? Highest of 
all, when his outward and inward endeavor are one; when we 
can name him artist, not earthly craftsman only, but inspired 
thinker, that with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for 
us. If the poor and humble toil, that we may have food, must 
not the high and glorious to 1 for him in return, that he have 
light, have guidance, freedom, immortality ? These, in all their 
degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind 
blow whither it listeth.” 

These are manly words from one of the manliest of men — 
the Giant Infidel and most successful Infidel-maker of the 
whole wide wo. Id. 


814 


PETER COOPER. 


PETER COOPER. 

Many years ago, in the city of New York, on what is known 
as Water Street, there was a small hat store and factory, kept 
by a man called Captain Cooper, a soldier of the revolutionary 
war. He had a large family, and made but poor progress in 
the world’s struggle. His wife, the daughter of another revolu¬ 
tionary soldier, was raised among the Pennsylvania Moravians, 
and was a valuable aid to the head of the family in caring for 
the same. They had seven sons and two daughters. The fifth 
was named Peter,—to-day, and for years past, of all the inhab¬ 
itants of New York City, the man most honored and beloved.— 
Mr. Cooper’s maternal grand-father was mayor of New York 
and deputy quarter-master-general during the revolutionary 
war, and expended a considerable private fortune in the service 
of his country. 

Peter Cooper was born in 1791. His father found use for him 
as soon as he was capable of light work, so his earliest recol¬ 
lections are of pulling and picking wool used in the manufactu¬ 
ring of hats. All his boyhood days he assisted his father, 
except during one year, when he went to school half of each 
day, learning reading, writing, and some arithmetic. His 
father finally left the hat business and set up a brewery in 
Peekskill. Peter did not like the business, and being of an 
inventive turn of mind, anxious for handling tools and machin¬ 
ery, at the age of seventeen, with his father’s consent, he came 
to New York to learn a business more congenial. After several 
days’ wandering without success, he engaged himself as an 
apprentice to a carriage firm, near the corner of Chambers 
Street and Broadway, for four years’ service, board and twenty- 
five dollars a }'ear. In these days such a salary would be 
spurned with contempt by the average young American; but he 
thought it fair: and it was, for those times. By working extra 
times, he made a little money, for a special purpose. Being 
anxious for more of an education than was possible to be 


PET Eli 00 0 TER. 


815 

obtained by one year’s schooling, he bought some books, read 
them attentively, and felt the need of a teacher, He looked 
about for a night school, but found none, as in all the city at 
that time not one existed. As far as he was able he hired a 
teacher to assist him in his studies, and so made considerable 
progress. He then resolved that if ever he had the power, he 
would found an institution such as he so much needed, where 
ajjprentices and young mechanics could get schooling and 
knowledge in the evening. This resolve was made before he 
was of age, and kept constantly in view for forty years before 
he could accomidish it. 

In 1814 he was married, and his wife was all that any woman 
could be to bring the fullest enjoyments of domestic bliss to 
such a man, It is said that during their married life of more 
than half a century, not a word was spoken nor an act done 
by either that gave the other pain. In the ordinary course of 
matrimonial life it became necessary to have a cradle. Mr. 
Cooper was equal to the emergency, and invented a self-rocking 
one with fan attachment, which he patented and sold for a 
small consideration. 

He embarked at one time in the grocery business, but with 
indifferent success. He had an opportunity to buy a glue fac¬ 
tory, situated at the present intersection of Madison avenue and 
Twenty-ninth street. He saw a good opening, he thought; the 
best glue being imported from Russia, and only an inferior 
article being manufactured in America. He bought the factory 
for two thousand dollars. For thirty years he worked hard at 
the business. He soon made the best glue in the market and 
found a ready sale." This yielded him large returns and soon 
he embarked in other enterprises and made many inventions, 
most of which produced no particular profit till many years 
afterwards. It was at his iron-works in Baltimore that the first 
practical locomotive was made. He originated the idea of 
employing iron in the frames and construction of houses. After 
forty years of successful business life, he commenced the con¬ 
summation of the fondest purpose of his life. 

At the head of the Bowery he built the “Cooper Institute.” 
The first and second stories are occupied by stores and busi¬ 
ness offices, the rent of which furnishes the fund that supports 


816 


PETEK COOPER. 


the institution. Under ground is the large room where public 
meetings of various kinds are held, and courses of popular lec¬ 
tures delivered. In the third story is the great reading room 
where papers, etc., from all parts of the world are to be found, 
free to all; and in the evening scores of mechanics and labor¬ 
ing men and women are to be seen enjoying the benevolence of 
Peter Cooper. The next story is occupied by class-rooms and 
lecture-rooms, all open for pupils in the evening, and free to all 
that behave themselves and are earnest to learn. This is a brief 
outline of the evening school which Peter Cooper resolved to 
found when he was a coach-maker’s apprentice, and the need of 
which he so much felt. Throughout his whole life till this scheme 
was accomplished, he kept it in view; and when successful in 
business, his success gave him pleasure, in that it brought nearer 
the accomplishment of this design. He bought the first lot of 
the block thirty years before he began to build, with the ulti¬ 
mate object in view. In 1854 the whole block was his, and he 
began to build. The structure is six stories high, fire proof, and 
cost seven hundred thousand dollars. In 1859 he delivered the 
whole affair to trustees, thus forever placing it beyond his own 
control. Two thousand pupils applied for admission at once, 
and the number rapidly increased. Nearly every evening he 
visits the institution to see its workings. It is the delight of 
his old age, the great object of his life. Recently he has given 
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to furnish a library of 
books of reference. 

In June, 1876, he was nominated by the Greenback Party for 
President, he being a warm advocate of paper money; but at 
the present writing there is little prospect of his election. 

As to Mr. Cooper’s religious opinions, it may bo safely said 
that they are very Liberal and unsectarian. The “Cooper Insti¬ 
tute ” is open on Sundays. 

Long may he live as one of the few “ faithful among the 
faithless ” of our rich and public men. He has repeatedly 
declared himself but a steward of wealth for the good of his 
kind, and most nobly has he fulfilled his beneficent steward¬ 
ship. 


LUCRETIA MOTT. 


817 


LUCRETIA MOTT. 


This celebrated reformer and philanthropist was born on the 
island of Nantucket, ‘‘of the Coffins and Macys on the father’s 
side, and of the Folgers on the mother’s; through them related 
to Dr. Franklin.” About 1808, her parents, who were members 
of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, removed to Philadelphia. 
In 1811 she was married to James Mott, of New York, who 
soon afterwards went to Philadelphia, and entered into mer¬ 
cantile business with her father. 

While still very young, her attention had been called to the 
iniquity of slavery, and she felt it her duty to abstain from the 
product of slave labor. “ The ministry of Elias Hicks and 
others, on the subject of the unrequited labor of slaves, and 
their example in refusing the products of slave labor, all had 
their effect in awakening a strong feeling in their behalf . 9% 
The unequal condition of woman in society also early impressed 
her mind. The temperance reform likewise engaged her atten- 
ion, and she became a warm advocate— in practice and on the 
platform — of total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks. 
The cause of peace also had a share of her efforts, leading to 
the ultra non-resistance ground. 

She traveled extensively, preaching the peculiar doctrines of 
the society in which she had been educated, and exposing the 
wickedness of slavery, intemperance, and war. In 1827, at the 
time of the separation in the Society of Friends, she joined the 
seceders, popularly known as *‘Hicksites,” and distinguished 
herself by Unitarian views of tho most radical kind. 

The labors of the devoted Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore, 
added to the untiring exertions of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and 
others in England, including Elizabeth Hey rick, whose work on 
slavery aroused them to a change in the mode of action, and of 
William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, prepared the way for a con¬ 
vention in Philadelphia, in 1833, to take tho ground of the imme¬ 
diate, not the gradual emancipation of American slaves, and to 


818 


LUCItETIA MOTT. 


impress the duty of unconditional liberty, without expatriation. 
In 1840, a “World’s Anti-Slavery Convention ” was called in Lon¬ 
don, and came off with great eclat. Mrs. Mott took an active 
part in making these conventions successful, as well as in the 
formation of an Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia and other 
places. Into the London Convention however, though other¬ 
wise treated with the greatest respect and courtesy, she was 
not admitted as a delegate, a majority of the Convention hav¬ 
ing decided that women should be excluded from any active 
participation in the business of the assembly! No wonder Mrs. 
Mott became a more active advocate than ever of Woman's 
Emancipation also. 

Mrs. Mott is now in her eighty-third year. She has done an 
immense amount of work, and still continues very active in' 
every good cause. She feels keenly the degradation of not being 
allowed to exercise the elective franchise, while ignorant and 
vile Caucasians and Negroes throng the polls, and virtually 
enact the laws of the land. Her heart is all a-tlirill with sym¬ 
pathy for the workingmen of every class. She lately declared 
that she would not condescend to set foot within the Centennial 
Exposition buildings so long as they were not opened on Sun¬ 
days for the edification and pleasures of the toilers who could 
not well attend on other days. 

As a speaker Mrs. Mott is characterized by an unaffected 
simplicity and earnestness o p manner, as well as by clearness 
and propriety of expression. “Her high morality, her uncom¬ 
mon intelligence, the beauty and consistency of her general 
character, illustrated in her domestic as well as in her public 
life, are such as to command the respect even of those who ki 
opinion differ most widely from her in regard to religious and 
social questions.” 


JAMES LICK, 


819 


JAMES LICK. 

This thorough, generous Freethinker was born August 25, 
179G, at Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. His 
grandfather was an emigrant from Germany, and lived to the 
advanced age of 104 years. He served in the war of American 
Independence. His sufferings at Valley Forge were recounted 
by him to his grandson, who, to this day, distinctly remembers 
the same. His father was born near Norristown, Pa. In the 
schools of the day James obtained an ordinary education. His 
school days finished, he worked several years at organ-making, 
a part of the time in Baltimore. In 1820 he removed to New 
York and started business for himself, but with his very limited 
capital he failed of success. After this he went to Buenos 
Ayres, South America, where he applied himself for ten years 
to piano-making, when he returned to the United States with 
some $ 10,000 worth of hides and other merchandise. 

After selling this stock of goods he thought to embark in 
piano-making in Philadelphia, where he had a near friend, and 
rented a store for that purpose, but decided afterwards to 
return to South America. He shipped a stock of pianos to 
Buenos Ayres, and after some five months there he sailed for 
Valparaiso, Chili, and afterwards to Callao, Peru, arriving at 
the latter city one day before a blockade was declared. This 
was fortunate for Mr. Lick, for had the port been closed, he 
would have continued on the brig Brilliant to Guayaquil, 
where, a few days after, from age and decay, she seemed liter¬ 
ally to go to pieces and sunk suddenly in the harbor with all 
on board. The captain and cook had gone ashore, and these 
were all of the crew that were saved. Had James Lick re¬ 
mained with the Brilliant he never would have been heard of 
more. 

Mr. Lick remained in Peru eleven years, and a considerable 
portion of the time in Lima, and was engaged in manufacturing 
and selling pianos. In 1847 he closed out his business, and with 


820 


JAMES LICK. 


$30,000 in doubloons sailed for San Francisco, California, when 
that city contained scarcely one thousand inhabitants. It had 
just emerged from the Mexican town called Yerba Buena, and 
was becoming, under American rule, a valuable sea port. As 
the news of the discovery of remarkable stores of gold had 
gone forth, thousands were soon rushing in and flocking to the 
mines. With his natural sagacity, Mr. Lick saw that San 
Francisco was destined to become a large and important city. 
Here he decided to remain and invest his money. He quietly 
surveyed the field, and decided in his own mind the directions 
in which the young city would grow and carefully examined 
the titles to various tracts of land. Here he invested all his 
money. Many a fifty and hundred vara lot passed into his 
possession, much of it to double, quadruple, and increase ten¬ 
fold in value. Most of his purchases were made in 1818. He 
also made extensive purchases in Sacramento, but finding the 
title to the property defective, he abandoned it. 

Among his enterprises was the building of a fine flowering 
mill on a piece of property near San Jose, which he purchased 
in 1852. The wood work of the mill was of mahogany, and the 
machinery of the first description. The entire cost of the mill 
was $200,000. It was called “Lick’s Folly,” but it turned out 
the finest flour in California, and Lick’s brand was everywhere 
considered the very best. Around the mill he planted, with his 
own hands, a sjilendid orchard of fruit trees, which in those 
early days possessed great value. 

He erected a splendid hotel in San Francisco called the 
“Lick House,” and one of the most comfortable family hotels 
in the city. It covers nearly an entire square, the exception 
being a corner he sold for a Masonic temple. The dining room 
is famous for its finish and proportions, the floor being com¬ 
posed of many thousand pieces of inlaid wood, and polished 
like a table. 

The great increase in the value of the property purchased 
by Mr. Lick made him a very wealthy man; and he lias dis¬ 
tinguished himself by his munificent donations. To the Pioneer 
Society of San Francisco he donated the valuable ground upon 
which their Hall is erected, and he afterwards adJed to his 
gift to this society, very valuable property on Market Street. 


JAMES LICK. 


821 


He also gave very valuable property to the California Academy 
of Sciences. 

Among his munificent gifts, was the present, in 1872, of his 
mill property near San Jose, to the Trustees of the Paine Mem¬ 
orial Hail, Boston, to wit, Horace Seaver, J. P. Mendum, T. L. 
Savage, D. R. Burt, and Morris Altman. Half the value of the 
property was donated to the building of Paine Hall, and half 
to a Lecturers’ Fund, to aid in sustaining lecturers in the field. 
It is to be regretted, however, that although this mill property 
had cost a large amount of money, it had, by many years of 
disuse and otherwise, fallen into decay, so that when sold, in 
1873, all that could be obtained for it was some $20,000 in 
greenbacks. Mr. i^ick thus originally intended the gift to be 
much larger than it proved to be. It must not be disguised 
that the selling of the property at figures he deemed far below 
its value and the manner in which the Paine Hall fund was 
afterwards handled by the Boston managers greatly displeased 
Mr. Lick. Had it been otherwise, it is thought by Mr. Lick’s 
friends that he would have contributed enough to have placed 
the Hall out of debt. That grounds for dissatisfaction have 
existed is greatly to be regretted. 

The crowning glory, however, in Mr. Lick’s munificence, 
consists in the cession of his immense property to seven trus¬ 
tees for the benefit of California and for scientific and noble 
purposes. Not having a list of his bequests before us the total 
of his very generous gifts cannot be given here; but suffice it 
to say they are very extensive and most liberal. An immense 
observatory is at the present time being constructed on a Cali¬ 
fornia mountain with the funds given by him. 

Mr. Lick for many years has been a firm and constant 
unbeliever in the dogmas of Christianity. He is now eighty 
years of age and in feeble health, but there is no faltering in 
his theological opinions. He still firmly maintains the Liberal 
views he has adhered to for many years. 

Mr. Lick died early Sunday morning, October 1, 1877, at the 
age of eighty-one years, having been gradually sinking for a 
long time previous to his death. It seemed to be a wasting 
away _ a flickering out of the lamp of life which for a long time 
had so feebly burned. 


822 


VICTOR HUGO. 


VICTOR HUGO. 

Victor Hugo’s biography ought to be written in letters of 
gold, and published in gorgeously illuminated and embellished 
volumes. Of all our modern novelists, he has done most service 
to cosmopolitan freedom — religious, political, and social. But 
he can be fairly judged only by his works, read in that most 
suggestive of languages in which they were written. There are 
good translations of several of his books, it is true; but then 
translations are only — well — translations. It would certainly 
repay the reader to become a proficient in French, were it only 
for the benefit and luxury of reading and understanding Victor 
Hugo. 

Vicomte Victor Marie Hugo is the son of Joseph L. S. Hugo, 
a French general and count, who, after serving Joseph Bona¬ 
parte as marshal of the palace at Naples, fought several years 
for him in Spain as general of brigade, gained several victories, 
and was raised to the rank of general of division. Our lyricist 
and novelist was born at Besancon in 1802. His mother was a 
Vendean royalist, with whose political sentiments he sympa¬ 
thized in his youth. His first poem, “On the Advantages of 
Study ” (1817), obtained an honorable mention from the French 
Academy. He received prizes for several royalist odes in 1818. 
In 1822 he married Mile. Foucher. In the same year he pub¬ 
lished the first volume of his “Odes and Ballads,” which 
quickly raised him to the first rank among the French poets of 
his time. His tales “Hans of Iceland,” and “Bug Jurgal,” 
were also written about this time. In 1826 he published a sec¬ 
ond volume of the “Odes and Ballads,” which exhibited a 
change in his political and literary opinions. In 1827 he com¬ 
posed his drama “Cromwell,” and next year published a vol¬ 
ume of odes, entitled “ Les Orientales,” remarkable for richness 
of imagination. In 1829 he imblished his “Last Days of a Con¬ 
demned Criminal,” a work which, owing to its fearful interest, 
secured an immense success. 


VICTOB HUGO. 


823 


The literati of France having ranged themselves in two hos¬ 
tile schools, styled the “Classic” and the “Romantic;” Victor 
Hugo became the recognized chief of the latter, formed mostly 
of young men. He prepared a further attack on the classical 
style of French dramatic literature in his “Hernani,” first play¬ 
ed at the “Theatre Francais” in 1830, when it caused a scene 
of riotous confusion. The French Academy went so far even as 
to lodge a complaint at the foot, of the throne against his 
attempted innovations, to which Charles X. most sensibly re¬ 
plied that “in matters of art he was no more than a private 
person.” Shortly after the revolution of July, 1830, his “Mari¬ 
on de Lorme,” which had been suppressed by the censorship 
under the Restoration, was performed with success. “Le Roi 
s’ Amuse ” was also performed at the Theatre Francais in Jan¬ 
uary, 1832, but was indicted by the government the day after. 

* In the same year appeared his “ Leaves of Autumn,” which was 
received with enthusiasm, and pronounced by critics a very gem 
of art. He afterwards published several dramatic pieces of vari¬ 
ous merit, and after much opposition was admitted into the Acad¬ 
emy in 1841, and created a peer of France by Louis Philippe. 

In 1849 he was chosen President of the Peace Congress, of 
which he had been a leading member. On the coup d'etat of 
December 2, 1851, he, then a member of the Legislative Assem¬ 
bly, was among those deputies who vainly attempted to assert 
the rights of the Assembly and to propose the Constitution. 
His conduct led to his proscription. He took refuge in the 
island of Jersey, and subsequently in that of Guernsey, where 
he still lives, hav'ng refused to avail himself of the general 
amnesties issued in 1859 and in 1869. But latterly, during the 
McMahon regime, he has made several visits to his native land, 
appeared and spoke there in public, and lent all the influence 
of his presence to genuine French liberty and patriotism. 

He has written much since he quitted France. His trenchant 
satire, “Napoleon the Little,” appeared at Brussels in 1852, and 
was vigorously suppressed in France, into which country it had 
been smuggled. “ Les Chatiments ” was brought out in 1852, 
also in Brussels; and in 1856 he published, under the title “Les 
Contemplations,” a collection of lyrical and personal poems 
which are among his best performances. 


824 


VICTOR HUGO. 


His admirable romance, “Notre-Dame de Paris” has been 
translated into most European languages, and is known in 
England and the United States under the title of the “Hunch¬ 
back of Notre Dame.'’ His grand social romance, “ Les Miser- 
ables,” in which the author, with great splendor of sentiment, 
keenness of analysis, and passionate dramatic force, handles, 
in the form of a story, some of the most important social 
questions, translated into nine languages, was issued at Paris, 
London, Brussels, New York, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg, 
and Turin, on the same day, April 3, 1862. “The Toilers of the 
Sea,” which appeared shortly afterwards, is a weird, highly 
artistic, and most powerful production, but not so well calcu¬ 
lated to be favorably received by the mere masses. “The Man 
Who Laughs; or, by the King’s Command,” published in 1869, 
and perhaps his most ambitious performance, is accounted by 
many quite a failure, although it possesses numberless passages 
of fine pathos and picturesque imagery. His “’92”—a later 
production still —is most excellent in its way. 

Victor Hugo’s works, especially his novels, powerfully and 
pathetically exhibit the “Martyrdom of Man” by the Church, 
by the State, by Social Usages, and by step-dame Nature her¬ 
self. Indeed, in his “Toilers of the Sea” he convinces the 
reader that what the Priest, the King, and Custom do by way 
of oppression, cruelty, and villainy is but as the dust of the 
balance by the side of what has been most aptly termed “the 
inhumanities of the Universe.” The great lesson which the 
great author teaches, in his manifold w T ays, is this: — “Nature, 
Fate, Authority, Institutions, are either directly cruel or coldly 
indifferent; therefore, gentle reader of my works, let us not 
imitate them; but the rather, because they are so, let us do 
our best to fight them down or improve them: and in the 
meantime let us set them all a better example, by loving one 
another .” 

The great novelist has already seen his seventy-fourth year. 
Grand old veteran in the cause of Freethought and Human 
Eights! he will die some time; but it will surely be with his 
w’ar-harness on. May he become a centenarian in his labors of 
love! Long live Victor Hugo! 


EMERSON 


825 


EMERSON. 


“All the forms are fugitive. 

But the substances survive; 

Ever fresh the broad creation — 

A divine improvision, 

From the heart of God proceeds, 

A single will, a million deeds. 

Once slept the world an egg of stone, 

And pulse, and sound, and light was none; 
And God said ‘ Throb,’ and there was motion. 
And the vast mass became vast / ocean. 

Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 

Who layeth the world’s incessant plan, 

Haltetli never in one shape. 

But forever doth escape. 

Like wave of flame, into new forms 
Of gem and air, of plants and w T orms. 

I that to-day am a pine, 

Yesterday was a bundle of grass. 

He is free and libertine, 

Pouring off his power, the wine 
To every age — to every race; 

Unto every race and age 
He emptieth the beverage; 

Unto each and unto all — 

Maker and original. 

The world is the ring of his spells. 

And the play of his miracles. 

As he giveth to all to drink, 

Thus or thus they are, and think. 

He giveth little, or giveth much, 

To make them several, or such. 

With one drop sheds form and feature; 

With the second a special nature; 


EMERSON. 


ftitf 

The third adds heat’s indulgent spark; 

The fourth gives light, which eats the dark; 

In the fifth drop himself he flings, 

And conscious Law is King of Kings. 

Pleaseth him, the Eternal Child 
To play his sweet will — glad and wild. 

As the bee through the garden ranges, 

From world to world the godhead changes; 

As the sheep go feeding in the waste, 

From form to form he maketh haste. 

This vault, which glows immense with light. 

Is the inn, where he lodges for a night. 

What recks such Traveler, if the bowers 
Which bloom and fade, like meadow flowers — 

A bunch of fragrant lilies be 
Or the stars of eternity? 

Alike to him, the better, the worse — 

The glowing angel, the outcast corse. 

Thou meetest him by centuries. 

And lo! he passes like the breeze; 

Thou seek’st in globe and galaxy. 

He hides in pure transparency; 

Thou askest in fountains, and in fires. 

He is the essence that inquires. 

He is the axis of the star; 

He is the sparkle of the spar; 

He is the heart of every creature; 

He is the meaning of each feature; 

And his mind is the sky, 

Than all it holds, more deep, more high.” 

In the above Modern Orphic, Mr. Emerson quaintly and 
weirdly brings out into bold relief the two cardinal articles of 
his transcendental faith, to wit: first, the eternal and universal 
primacy of Mind, and, second, the connection of the individual 
intellect with the primal Mind, and its ability to draw thence 
wisdom, will, virtue, prudence, heroism, all active and passive 
qualities. He has been charged with Pantheism. But he is 
never concerned to defend himself against the charge, or the 


EMERSON. 


827 


warning to beware lest he unsettle the foundation of morality, 
annihilate the freedom of the will, abolish the distinction be¬ 
tween right and wrong, and reduce personality to a mask. He 
makes no apology; he never explains; he trusts to affirmation, 
pure and simple. He is the Oracle; he delivers and asserts, 
spurning Logic, exhibiting the supremest contempt for Common 
Sense. 

Halpli Waldo Emerson, the world-renowned American assay- 
ist, poet, and speculative philosopher, was born in Boston in 
1803. He entered Harvard in 1817, and took the degree of A. B. 
in 1821. While at college he is said to have spent much of his 
time in the library, and although not distinguished for his pro¬ 
ficiency in the regular studies of the curriculum, he was supe¬ 
rior to most of his class-mates in his knowledge of general lit¬ 
erature. His health failing about 1827, he spent the ensuing 
winter in Florida. 

In 1829 ho was ordained at the Second Unitarian church of 
Boston, as colleague of Henry Ware; but he resigned this posi¬ 
tion in 1832, because he could not accept the views of his 
Church in regard to the Lord’s Supper. In December of the 
same year lie sailed for Europe, and returned to his native land 
in the autumn of 1833. Soon after he commenced his career as 
lecturer, his discourses embracing almost every variety of sub¬ 
ject, from'simple “Water” to “Milton,” “Human Nature,” 
and universal “Nature.” 

In 1841 a volume of his “Essays” appeared, and excited 
much attention by its freshness and originality of thought and 
sparkling beauty of expression. On the establishment of the 
Transcendentalist organ —“The Dial” —in 1840, he became one 
of the contributors, and was afterwards its editor from 1842 to 
1841. In 1844 a second series of “Essays” made its appear¬ 
ance. It was characterized by the same striking peculiarities 
of thought and expression that had previously attracted so 
many readers, and soon procured for him a multitudo of ad¬ 
mirers on both sides of the Atlantic. In 184G a collection of 
his poems was imblished. As a poet, his merits are one of a 
high order, although his poetry is not of a kind to be popular 
with the generality of readers. 

In 1847 he visited England, in order to fulfil an engagement 


828 


E3IERS0N. 


which ho had made to deliver a series o? lectures before vari¬ 
ous institutes and societies in that country. In 1850 he issued 
a small volume, entitled “ Representative Men,” one of the 
most important of all his publications: it is doubtless that 
upon which his permanent reputation as a thinker will princi¬ 
pally rest. It consists of a series of characters or mental por¬ 
traits, each of which is designed to represent a class, to wit: 1, 
Plato, or the Philosopher; 2. Swedenborg, or the Mystic; 3. 
Montaigne, or the Skeptic; 4. Sliakspere, or the Poet; 5. Napo¬ 
leon, or the Man of the World; 6. Goethe, or the Writer. 

Hr. Emerson’s “English Traits” (1856) is one of his most 
popular and attractive books. His “Conduct of Life” is also 
much read, as are his “Mind and Manners of t'.e Nineteenth 
Century,” and his “Memoir of Margaret Fuller.” 

In his i>hilosophical or metaphysical views — and what is he, 
after all, but a mere metaphysician ? — he may be said to 
approximate the celebrated German transcendentalist Fichte. 

He is unquestionably one of the most eminent modern phi¬ 
losophers of the Pantheistic school, and one of the most 
remarkable personifications of American genius. Some of his 
works have been translated into French, and have excited con¬ 
siderable admiration among the Parisian transcendentalists, 
whilst his appreciation by many German readers is well-nigh 
unbounded. “ The power that the richest genius has in Shaks- 
pere, Raphael, Goethe, Beethoven, to reconcile the soul to life, to 
give joy for heaviness, to dissipate fears, to transfigure care and 
toil, to convert lead into gold, and lift the veil that conceals 
the forms of hope, Grimm [the celebrated German author] 
ascribes in the highest measures to Emerson.” 

Mr. Emerson is distinguished for originality, as well as for 
subtlety of Intel ect. One cannot, however, help suspecting 
that, in his love of originality and his anxiety to shake himself 
wholly free from the trammels of the past, he sometimes runs 
into errors in the opposite direction, from which his geod sense 
and rare sagacity might otherwise have preserved him. “The 
errpnasis of his statements is often fatal to the needful qualifi¬ 
cations: but that requires his readers to be thinkers too, and 
net passive recipients of his thinking.” 


WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON- 


829 


WILLIAM LLOYD -GARRISON. 

This world-famed leader of the advocates of emancipation in 
the United States, was born in Newburyport, Mass., December 
12, 1804. He was bound to a cabinet-maker at the age of four¬ 
teen ; but such was his aversion to the trade, that his master was 
led to release him. He was then placed in the office of the 
“Newburyport Herald” to learn the art of printing, in which 
he soon became expert. While serving his apprenticeship there 
he began to write anonymously, not only for the “Herald,” 
but numerous other papers. He was highly gratified upon 
receiving from Mr. Allen, the editor, a letter through the post 
office, complimenting him upon his communications, and urging 
him to continue contribuing to the paper. His articles in the 
“Salem Gazette,” written when but a mere lad, attracted much 
attention and comment. 

About the twentieth year of his age the struggle of the 
Greeks for freedom were awakening the interest of the friends 
of liberty throughout the world; and so strongly enlisted in 
the cause was the sympathy of William Lloyd that he seriously 
contemplated entering the West Point Academy in order to fit 
himself for a military career. But when his term of appren¬ 
ticeship expired in 1826, he became the manager of a paper of 
his own, called the “Free Press,” which he published at New¬ 
buryport. The paper, however, did not prove successful, and 
was soon discontinued. 

In 1827 he became the editor of a Boston paper, called the 
“National Philanthropist,” the first temperance paper published 
in America. In 1829 he became associated with Benjamin Lundy 
in the publication of the “Genius of Universal Emancipation” 
at Baltimore. This journal had previously advocated the grad¬ 
ual abolition of slavery; but from the very first number issued 
by Garrison, the paper became devoted to the rights of the 
slave and the cause of immediate emancipation. He soon after 
began his uncompromising crusade against the domestic slave 


830 


WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 


trade. He denounced slave-holders in the severest manner, and 
publicly avowed his purpose of “covering with thick infamy” 
all engaged in the traffic of men. His boldness of speech sub¬ 
jected him to a trial and conviction for libel. Unable to pay 
the costs, he was sent to prison, where he remained for nearly 
two months. Arthur Tappan, of New York, finally paid his 
fine, and restored him to liberty. 

He began the publication of his famous anti-slavery journal, 
“The Liberator,” on the first of January, 1831, in Boston. This 
was a weekly paper, devoted to the rights of the slave. He 
adopted for his motto, “My country is the world, my country¬ 
men are all mankind.” His unsparing onslaught against the 
institution of slavery excited the intensest exasperation against 
him in the Southern States. Every mail brought him letters 
filled with threats of violence and assassination. The Legisla¬ 
ture of Georgia offered a reward of five thousand dollars for 
his arrest and conviction according to the laws of that State. 
His “Liberator” produced great excitement all through the 
country. In man}' parts of the North, and even in the capital 
of Massachusetts itself, his life was in the utmost peril. His 
non-resistant principles prevented him from complying with 
the entreaties of his friends to go armed in self-defense. 

When Garrison first commenced his crusade against the 
“sum of all villainies” he was a member of a Christian church; 
but his experience was that of all the disinterested workers for 
the weal of the world for the last eighteen centuries —the most 
crushing opposition from that Church, which has ever sought 
the glorification of a tyrant in heaven rather than the well¬ 
being of men on earth. He soon saw that his grand and glori¬ 
ous mission must be effected outside of orthodox organizations 
and in spi:e of the Church of Christ. He found that slavery 
was a Christian institution, sustained by creeds and bibles and 
pulpits; and disgusted with the shams of a senseless supersti¬ 
tion arrayed against the rights of the race, he heroically threw 
down his wager of battle before all the forces of Church and 
State as the champion of crushed and fettered humanity. And 
to-day there breathes no nobler Infidel, no purer philanthropist, 
no man who has labored harder and with a more disinterested 
heart for the good of mankind, than William Lloyd Garrison. 


EOBEIiT DALE OWEN. 


831 


ROBERT DALE OWEN. 

This distinguished political and spiritualistic writer, son of 
the great socialist Robert Owen, was born at New Lanark, 
Scotland, in 1801. His mother, a gentle and worthy woman, 
was a devout Presbyterian of the most rigidly orthodox type. 
She firmly believed that all who read the Bible every m or ding, 
and said prayers every night, and went to Church twice every 
Sunday, became good people, and would be saved and go to 
heaven; while all who disbe ieved it were lost souls, who would 
be punished forever with the Devil and his angels. His father 
was a Deist, or what may more properly bo called a free- 
thinking Unitarian. The son was left to the orthodox teaching 
of his mother, his father never interfering with their religious 
sentiments; and so the young Robert Dale was tho rughly indoc¬ 
trinated with the creed of Calvin. But he rela es that while 
daily listening to his mother’s pious homilies a> i repeating his 
catechism task, the many incongruities and • mtradictions of 
the Scriptures presented serious stumbling blocks to his youth¬ 
ful mind. The conversations he listened to between his fath¬ 
er’s visitors at the house served to increase his doubts; until at 
last he completely lost faith in his mother’s cherished creed. 

He grew up and was educated at the age of sixteen in the 
quiet and genial atmosphere of a domestic circle in the country. 
He and his brother William had been taught German by a 
private tutor, and in the autumn of 1820 the two youths were 
sent to the college at Hofwyl, then a popular school attended 
by students from every part of Europe. Robert Dale left this 
institution thoroughly versed in all the college branches, and 
outstripping all his fellows in literary composition. 

In 1824 he issued his first book, a small octavo volume of a 
hundred pages, entitled, “ An Outline of the System of Educa¬ 
tion at New Lanark.” This met with a flattering reception 
from the public. Two or three years succeeding his college life 
he passed in his father’s counting-house at New Lanark. He 


832 


ROBERT DALE OWE N* 


there mastered all the operations of the factory, and managed 
his father’s extensive business in his absence. His father pur¬ 
chased a village and a large tract of land in Indiana, in order 
to test his social theory in the United States; and in the 
autumn of 1825 Robert Dale accompanied him thither. But, as 
the world knows, the scheme proved unsuccessful, and Robert 
Owen at last conveyed the communal property to his sons. 

After the failure of Frances Wright’s emancipation enterprise 
at Nashoba, Robert Dale Owen was one of the ten trustees to 
whom she deeded the farm in perpetual trust for the benefit 
of the negro race. In 1827 he accompanied her to Europe, 
spending several weeks in Paris, where he became the guest of 
Lafayette. From France he crossed over to Scotland. An 
interesting account of the distinguished characters and many 
pleasing incidents he met with there, and in his later life in 
London is given in his last book, “Threading My Way.” Re¬ 
turning to the United States, where he had already become a 
citizen, he was soon after honored with important public posi¬ 
tions. In 1843 he was elected to Congress by the Democratic 
party. In 1853 he was sent as charge d’affaires to Naples. 

His reputation as an author has been established by the 
following publications: “New Yiews of Society” (1825), “Hints 
on Public Architecture” (1840), “Footfalls on the Boundaries of 
another world” (1850), “The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of 
Emancipation” (1864), “Beyond the Breakers” (1870), “The 
Debatable Land,” and “Threading My Way” (1874). His “De¬ 
batable Land” and “Footfalls” are able and exhaustive ex¬ 
positions of the Harmonial Philosophy, and as such are greatly 
valued by Spiritualists. All cf his works are excellent additions 
to American literature. A few years ago his health became 
considerably impaired, occasioning a temporary affection of his 
mind; but at the present writing he has so far been restored 
to both bodily and mental vigor as to encourage the hope of 
liis friends that many pleasant and useful years of earth-life 
are still before him. Even during the present year, on June 23, 
1376, Mr. Owen was married to Miss Lottie Walton Kellogg. 
Her home is one of the most romantic spots on the shores of 
Lake George. This will be the future abiding place of the bride 
and groom. May happiness and tranquillity abide with them. 


GARIBALDI. 


833 


GARIBALDI. 


This intrepid foe to tyranny and priestcraft was born at Nice, 
Italy, July 4, 1807. He entered the navy in early youth. Hav¬ 
ing become an active friend of liberty lie was banished in 1834. 
About 1836 he took up arms for the republic of Uruguay, and 
fought against Brazil for several years. Before the end of this 
war he married a South American 1 idy named Anita, who 
afterwards shared with him in Italy the clangers of his military 
career. In 1844 he volunteered to defend Montevideo against 
Eosas, and led his Italian legion to victory at San Antonio, in 
1846. He quitted South America in 1818, and joined the Italian 
patriots in the war against Austria. He offered his services to 
King Charles Albert, but was treated by him with coldness and 
distrust. 

After the flight of the Pope he took an active part in found¬ 
ing the Roman Eepublic, and in the defense of Rome against 
the French army in April and May, 1849. During the siege of 
Borne he displayed great heroism, and gained several victories 
over the Neapolitans who threatened that city. When the 
French captured Rome in July, 1819, Garibaldi escaped with 
several hundred men, and after passing through many desperate 
adventures and conflicts with the Austrians, was again driven 
into exile, and became, in 1850, a resident of New York. He 
worked several years at soap and candle-making near the city, 
and afterwards made several trips to the Pacific. 

Early in 1859 he offered his services to the King of Sardinia, 
and having formed a detached corps called ‘‘Hunters of the 
Alps,” he gained several victories over the Austrians at Yarese, 
Como, etc. Having raised a small army for the liberation of 
Southern Italy from the domination of the Bourbon King of 
Naples, he landed at Marsala, in Sicily, in May, 1860. He 
speedily took Palermo and Messina, and crossing over to the 
main land in August, occupied the city of Naples about the 8th 
of September. His army, reinforced by many Liberals of South- 


834 


GARIBALDI. 


ern Italjq defeated the troops of King Francis in October, and 
expelled him from the country, which was soon annexed to the 
Kingdom of Italy. After this he retired to his home in the 
island of Caprera. He showed his true greatness as much at 
rest as when in public duty. 

In April, 1862, he was appointed General-in-Chief of the Ital¬ 
ian National Guard. In the summer he engaged in an enter¬ 
prise disapproved by the Italian government, and came into 
collision with the royal troops of Aspromonte, where he was 
wounded in the foot and taken prisoner. 

In 1864 he visited England and was received with great en¬ 
thusiasm. He fought against the Austrians in the short war of 
1866 at the head of a corps of volunteers. On several occasions 
he has inflamed the patriotism of his countrymen by eloquent 
addresses. Acting, without the authority of the government, he 
raised, in the summer of 1867, an army for the liberation of 
Rome, which he wished to annex to the Kingdom of Italy. In 
an address to the Pope of Borne, dated September 16, he said: 
— “ Break the rings of your chains on the necks of your op¬ 
pressors, and henceforth you will share your glory with the 
Italians.” He v T as arrested by the order of the King at Sina- 
lunga, September 23, and confined, but soon escaped and invad¬ 
ed the Papal States with a body of troops who were defeated 
at Montana by the Papal forces and their French allies in No¬ 
vember, 1867. 

The Bomish Church regards him as one of her worst ene¬ 
mies, and hates him as only she knows how to hate. He has 
played an important part in the unification of Italy, and in 
driving the temporal power of the Pope out of Italy. 

He has been one of the most earnest patriots and one of the 
most ardent lovers of liberty alive at the present time. He has 
hated with intense hatred the oppressors of his beloved Italy, 
and as he saw the ecclesiastical power was one of her greatest 
oppressors, that power inevitably came in for a full share of his 
just abhorrence. His services in curtailing papal temporal 
power in his loved country have been essential and must have 
their consequent results in the years yet to come. 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


83* 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD'. 

Lydia Maria Francis was born at Medford, Mass., Feb. 11, 
1802. She was the j’-oungest of a family of six children. Her 
father was a man of strong character and great industry, a 
baker by trade, who first introduced what are still called 
“ Medford crackers.” Her mother is mentioned as a woman 
with “a simple, loving heart, and a spirit busy in doing good.” 
Her early educational opportunities consisted in attending the 
public school, with one year at a private seminary near her 
home. Upon the death of her mother, in 1814, the family 
moved to Maine. 

At an early age she was characterized by uncommon ideality, 
enthusiasm, and moral courage. Her career as an authoress 
commenced in her girlhood. Being at her brother’s house one 
summer Sunday noon, she happened to read a review of the 
now nearly forgotten poem of “Yamoyden,” in which the 
author pointed out the use of early American history for the 
purpose of fictitious writing. Before attending the afternoon 
service, she wrote the first chapter of a novel. It was soon 
finished and published, a little volume of two hundred pages, 
entitled “Hobomok; a Tale of Early Times. By an American.” 
This was in the very dawn of American literature, and was the 
first work whose scene was laid in Puritan days. As such it 
will always have a historic interest. 

The success of her first effort was such as to encourage the 
publication of a second tale the following year. This was ‘‘The 
Bebels. By the author of Hobomok.” This had a remarkable 
success, comparing favorably with Cooper’s revolutionary novels. 
It contained an imaginary sermon by Whitefield and an imag¬ 
inary speech by James Otis. Both of these specimens of elo¬ 
quence from a young lady’s romance were soon transferred to 
“School Readers” and books of declamation. 

The young novelist soon became a fashionable lion. She 
became an American Fanny Barney. Her rare personal quali- 


836 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


ties cemented life-long attachments. In 1825 she opened a pri 
vate school in Watertown, which she continued till 1828. In 
October, 1828, she was married to David Lee Child, a Boston 
lawyer. The next year she issued her ‘'Frugal Housewife,” a 
book which proved so popular that in 1836 it had reached its 
twentieth edition, and in 1855 its thirty-third. Her “ Mother’s 
Book,” published in 1831, reached its eighth American edition, 
besides twelve English editions and a German translation. Her 
“Girl’s Own Book,” a capital manual of indoor games, was 
published the same year. The “History of Woman” appeared 
in 1832, as one of a series projected by Carter and Hendee, of 
which Mrs. Child was to be the editor, but which was inter¬ 
rupted at the fifth volume by the failure of the publishers. This 
work, and her next, the “Biographies of Good Wives,” reached 
a fifth edition. Her “Coronal” was published in 1833. 

The same year she issued a work which forms an era in her 
literary life. It was the most dangerous moment of the rising 
storm of anti-slavery agitation—just after Garrison had begun 
the “Liberator,” and just before he was dragged through the 
streets of Boston with a rope round his neck — that she gave to 
the world her “Appeal for that Class of Americans called Afri¬ 
cans.” At that time it was a sublime act of moral heroism for 
a literary lady, amid the cultivated circles of Boston, to make 
such an “Appeal;” and that she fully apprehended the dissat¬ 
isfaction of the public appears from the following paragraph 
from the preface to the same: “lam fully aware of the unpop¬ 
ularity of the task I have undertaken; but though I expect 
ridicule and censure, I cannot fear them. A few years hence, 
the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I have not 
the most transient interest; but this book will be abroad on its 
mission of humanity long after the hand that wrote it is ming¬ 
ling with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even 
one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I 
would not exchange the consciousness for all Rothschild’s 
wealth, or Sir Walter’s fame.” 

In 1841, she, with her husband, assumed the editorship oi, 
the “Anti-Slavery Standard.” During the ill health of Mr. 
Child for two years she conducted the paper alone. For eight 
years she aided her husband in his arduous task. Particular 


LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 


837 


mention cannot here be given of her Almanacs and Letters 
and press contributions that every now and then were given to 
the public. Her “Fact and Fiction” was issued in 1846. Her 
next literary task was three small volumes published in 1852, 
under the title of “Flowers for Children.” 

The most arduous literary labor of her life was her “ Progress 
of Religious Ideas.” This great work—the result of eight 
3 r ears of application, was published in three large volumes, in 
1855. It is the best attempt in the English language to bring 
together in a popular form the religious symbols and utterances 
of different ages, pointing out their analogies and treating all 
with respect. Notwithstanding the rare candor exhibited in 
this work, and the extreme care to avoid a recognition of the 
superiority of any particular form of faith, s'.ill the yery absence 
from its pages of the prevailing Christian prejudice has been 
sufficient to render it unpopular and provoke the disfavor of 
creedists and sectarian bigots. It is not denied that the ten¬ 
dency of the work, replete as it is with impartial and well sub¬ 
stantiated historical analogies, is extremely damaging to the 
unfounded claims of Christianity; though it contains nothing 
that might be construed into irreverence or that need give dis¬ 
satisfaction to the sincere seeker after truth. 

All of Mrs. Child’s works or acts connected with her literary 
career cannot be enumerated here. 

It is now twenty-eight years since she left the busy world of 
New York and society, and took up her abode in a house 
bequeathed to her by her father, at Wayland, Mass. In that 
quiet village she and her husband have peacefully dwelt, avoid¬ 
ing even friendship’s intrusions. She is a Rationalist — in other 
words, a woman without superstition. But that she has a heart 
ever inspired by the holiest and most disinterested love for 
human kind, the many recipients of her munificent charities, 
and the millions of emancipated blacks throughout the Repub¬ 
lic to-day, can give ample affirmation. Of her incomparable 
literary productions, it is unnecessary to speak. The name of 
no other female writer is more justly cherished in the home 
circles of America. 


838 


MARGARET CHAPPELLSMITH, 


MARGARET CHAPPELLSMITH. 

Margaret Chappellsmith was born in Aldgate, London, on 
the twenty-seventh of February, 1806 . Her father, whose name 
was Reynolds, read aloud a great amount of political literature 
and of newspaper intelligence, and he found in Margaret an 
attentive listener. At eight years of age she was an intelligent 
reader of Cobbett’s writings and of Paine’s “Rights of Man.” 
She had but little time for reading, but for twenty-seven years 
her father read to her while she was occupied with domestic 
and many business affairs. From seven years of age she attend¬ 
ed in her father’s book store, and was early spoken of as a 
remarkable child. Her parents belonged to the Church of 
England, but they did not trouble themselves about its doc¬ 
trines. By them and all those she associated with she was 
taught that the Bible contained the revealed law of God. Her 
intelligence and justice made her desire to know not what is 
popular, but what is true. From Paine and Cobbett she learned 
to disregard the mere assertions of writers and speakers, how¬ 
ever great their reputation, and to search for facts, and on them 
to form her own opinion. On this principle she studied Chris¬ 
tianity at a very early age, not doubting, then, the historic 
value of the Gospels; she read much of the Bible, read and 
re-read the New Testament, and then read the various creeds 
of the great variety of Christians, and decided that the creed 
of Calvin was most in harmony wdth the New Testament and 
with what, from early childhood, she had with sorrow observed 
in life. She had asked, as she knelt to say the Lord’s Prayer, 
“Why arc some children so wicked W'hen God could cause all to 
be good?” The scheme set forth by Calvin seemed to her 
always awfully unjust, still she supposed it to be the truth, and 
she set herself industriously to work to learn from preachers 
and writers some satisfactory elucidation, some evidence that 
her God was honest; and, above all, that the Gospels have his* 
toric value that their narratives are supported by contempo* 


MARGARET CHAPPELLSMITH. 


839 


rary write:s. She went three times on each Sunday to church; 
she spent the very few holidays that she took from week-day 
labor to hear preachers, but not one of them touched on the 
. essential points of the momentous questions. The Christian 
historian’s evidence of the historic value of the Gospels, she 
found to be mere assertion, in opposition to historic facts, and 
the ClinsTan philosophers failed to justify the ways of God to 
man, for they admitted the influences that inevitably form 
character and opinion, religious, moral, and social, and yet they 
insisted that God had a right to punish here and hereafter the 
beings that he had made capable of sinning and of falling into 
erroneous beliefs, and whom he would not keep from sin and 
error, and she concluded that such a God and such Gospels 
were as little worthy of belief as they were of respect. 

From the conversations which she took part in at her father’s 
counter, she was known to have considerable knowledge of 
public affairs, and particularly of the operations of the paper- 
money system of England. Colonel P. Thomson, in a public 
address, stated that he had recently met with a young woman 
who displayed considerable intelligence on a very intricate 
question. Margaret had recently questioned and opposed him 
at a meeting of the Workingmen’s Association which lie had 
addressed. In 1836 she was urged to write a series of articl s 
explaining the existing political condition and the injurious 
operation of a paper-money system. She consented, and w r rote 
under the signature of “A Woman ” twenty-five articles, which 
were published in Hetherington’s “ Lodon Dispatch.” In them 
she treated of William Cobbett’s principles and predictions 
concerning the English paper-money system, and the various 
remedies for the removal of its evils. 

Her career as a lecturer was determined by the committee of 
a literary institution requesting her to give at their institution 
some lectures on any of the subjects she discussed at her fath¬ 
er’s counter. She gave them two lectures, and these, and the 
letters above named, induced the “Cobbett Club” to request 
her to give as many lectures as she pleased on the character 
and writings of William Cobbett, to vdiom she had been per¬ 
sonally known, and who had informed her of his wish that, she 
should visit him. She gave four lectures on the subject, com- 


840 


MARGARET CHAPPELLSMI TJI. 


mencing January 7, 1839, at the London Mechanics’ Institute. 
It was said, in the report of the first lecture, in the “Morning 
Advertiser.” that the novelty of a lecture by a lady attracted a 
very numerous audience, and that “we have rarely observed a 
deeper impression produced on an audience than was effected 
by the unassuming manners of Miss Reynolds, and the gentle 
but clear and judicious elocution which was displayed on the 
occasion.” At the request of Mr. Cobbett’s executor, she con¬ 
densed Cobbett’s “Paper Against Gold,” containing the “His¬ 
tory of the Bank of England,” “The Funds,” “The Debt,” 
“The Sinking Fund,” and “The Bank Stoppage.” This con¬ 
densation was published by Heyw.ood of Manchester. 

Robert Owen attended the lectures, and, knowing Margaret’s 
approval of his system of society, he and some of his disciples 
urged to her that as she could give useful lectures, she ought to 
give them, and, under the influence of a sense of duty, she vio¬ 
lated her own stay-at-home inclinations, and commenced in 
London and its environs a series of lectures “On the Present 
Condition and Future Prospects of England,” “On Cooperation,” 
“On the Formation of Character,” “On the Causes of Misery 
in Married Life,” “ Of Misery in that Condition,” which ought 
to be the happiest, and which might be such under the better 
education and more intimate knowledge of character which 
communistic arrangements would permit; arguing in favor of 
permanent marriages as most conducive to happiness and mor¬ 
ality, with a plea for divorce in such cases of discord in mar¬ 
ried life as might exist even when more rational precaution 
than is now thought of had been exercised against it, “On her 
Religious Exj)erience,” justifying her disbelief in the God of 
the Bible, “On the Protestant Reformation,” “On Sectarian 
Animosity,” “On the Use and Abuse of Money as an Instru¬ 
ment of Exchange,” particular'y of “paper-money,” “On the 
Rights, Capabilities, and Duties of Women,” and on other sub¬ 
jects, all tending to show the evils arising from the competitive 
system of society. These lectures were attractive, and success¬ 
ful in making converts, and invitations to lecture in other places 
followed in quick succession; and Margaret, who before she left 
London, had become Mrs. Chappellsmith, gave lectures, in 
response to invitations, in many of the principal towns of Eng- 


MARGARET C H AT P E L L S M I T II. 


841 


land and Scotland, but as herself and husband went into busi¬ 
ness as booksellers in 1842, she declined all after invitations. 

Her expression of anti-religious opinions offended her mother, 
who determined that the rest of her children should not be led 
to investigate religious, political or philosophical subjects. This 
restrained and embarrassed Margaret in discussing such subjects 
in her mother’s presence, and in 1837 she had long ceased to 
investigate and discuss rel gious questions; but, in reply to a 
young Christian, now an eminent oculist, who wanted to know 
her reasons for her anti-religion, she hastily wrote in 1837 her, 
to him, all-sufficient reasons. Among them is the following, 
which bears on a prominent question of the present time. She 
said: “The principal argument in favor of a Creator is the 
idea that the human race is a new formation. But Lamarck’s 
hypothesis does not seem impossible, and it is likely some dis¬ 
coveries may be made that will prove the race to be the result 
of a gradual progression during an immense period of time, 
from a simple animal.” But, she said, she cared not about if, 
she was satisfied that it is only important to know the physical 
existences that surround us, how they afflict us, and how they 
may be used for our benefit. But she referred to the evils exist¬ 
ing in society and throughout Nature, and said: “It is this 
knowledge which makes me conceive there is no Supreme Euler 
of the Universe, as such a power would not create sentient 
beings to be the prey of each other, and to suffer as they do 
from physical evils, from ignorance, and from vice.” She said: 
“I may be deficient of that degree of intellectual power which 
is required to enable a being to make just deductions from such 
evidences as have come in my way, but I did not shape the 
anterior lobe of my brain; I may not have read as much as is 
necessary of those expositions of the Scriptures, which, of them¬ 
selves, induce the idea that a book which requires such a pon¬ 
derous collection of lengthy expositions cannot, in justice, be 
the means whereby any shall be saved; but if it be I have not 
determined those circumstances which deprive me of the pecun¬ 
iary means to obtain those books, nor those which, compelling 
me to work sixteen hours a day in six days out of every week^ 
have deprived me of the time for investigation and delibera¬ 
tion. It may be said that my investigations, such as they have 


842 


MARGARET CHAPrELLSMITH. 


been, have been carried on with a desire to support my present 
belief, and that I have obstinately resisted contrary convictions. 
I deny it; but supposing it was so, did I create the self-esteem 
which makes me think, in opposition to the Truth, that I am 
right,the approbativeness which makes me desire that others 
shall think me right, or that obstinacy of disposition which 
makes me resist the truth? Christ said: ‘What shall it profit a 
man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?’ I 
may believe, not being able to re- ist the force of truth, that these 
are the words of an incarnate God, and yet I may be so stupidly 
perverse as to peril my soul by denying his divinity and the truth 
of his doctrines; admitting all these to be, can it be just that 
he, who created me with deficient intelligence, and with uncon¬ 
trolled evil feelings, and who placed me in circumstances which 
have limited my knowledge to what it is, should punish me in 
any way for being exactly such as he intended me to be ? (M. 
Reynolds, July, 1837.)” In the article by “A Woman,” June, 
1837, she said, on the Rights of Women, and on why they 
should study politics, the study ‘‘when rightly pursued — when 
it is a study of principle, and not of party —is most interest¬ 
ing; most women may find time for it. The twenty-two years 
out of thirty of my life, in which I studied politics were actively 
employed in, at different periods, every domestic employment, 
and in superintending a business requiring much mental ac¬ 
tivity, but politics have been my relaxation.” 

She was provoked by one of the numerous unjust attacks 
upon the intelligence of the people of India, which induced her 
to write for the “Boston Investigator” some articles on India 
and the English in India, and Mr. Seaver requested her to 
continue to send articles. She has sent many, on various sub¬ 
jects, among them many that set forth the unauthenticity of 
the New Testiment, and reasons for belief in the non-existence 
of the Jesus of the Gospels, and that Christiani:y originated in 
the belief, set forth in allegories by sects called Gnostics, in a 
spirit they call Christ. The Essays she has contributed to “The 
Boston Investigator” and other periodicals have been volumin¬ 
ous, and were they put up in book form they would make sev¬ 
eral volumes. 


JOHN CHAPPELLSMITH. 


843 


JOHN CIIA P P E L L S MITII. 

John Chappellsmith was born in Sheffield, England, May 21, 
180G. His father was a manufacturer of metal-ware, and waa 
among those who, through ignorance of the consequences 
fluctuations in the amount and in the purchasing power of 
paper-money, are ruined, as he w T as, when John was eleven 
years of age; and from that time, for twenty-one years, John’s 
life was generally a course of sorrow, anxiety, and of unassisted 
endeavor to assist his family. Ilis father became, instead of a 
help, a hindrance, and left John to work out for himself an 
education in books, science, morals, theology, and in the arts of 
drawing, engraving and portait-painting, by which, after the 
death of his father in 182 G, he supported himself and gave all 
that a most rigid frugality enabled him to spare to aid his 
mother and her three other children; therefore, he had no 
money to buy books, nor time for study. His relatives were 
genteel, but not intellectual, and his devotion to them with his 
stay-at-home habits kept him out of society, and thus he was 
not early disgusted with popular opinions. 

In Sheffield, John and his parents attended the Parish 
Church, of which a near relative was the minister. But such 
religious ideas as he acquired were little more than thatworldy 
advantage would follow on the practice of going to Church, and 
on having a veneration f-r the Bible; and the small family 
library of such works as those of Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, 
Sterne, and Eenelon supported the idea that belief in God and 
Christianity, combined with chastity, sobriety and justice in 
conduct, would be rewarded with worldly prosperity. Before 
John was eleven years of age he ceased to attend Church and 
school, and gave his time, even on Sunday, to work for the 
benefit of his family. In 1818 his parents removed to London, 
and commenced a continued struggle to live by trading, in 
which John took an active part. 

John’s readings had established in his mind that to accept 


844 


JOHN CIIAPPELLSHITH. 


whatever seemed to be true, and not to fear any ill conse¬ 
quences from accepting it, is only a natural procedure, therefore, 
when in 1823, he happened to hear an argument on the absurd¬ 
ity of the gospel narratives, he did what he had never done 
before, reasoned to himseif on the subject, and he concluded 
that the gospels are fables. Soon after this, “ Watson’s Apol¬ 
ogy for the Bible ” fell into his hands, and this purports to 
refute all that Paine’s “Age of Reason ” set forth against Chris¬ 
tianity, but which so utterly fails in its purpose that John was 
convinced from it that Christianity was without support from 
either history or reason; and, as Watson’s arguments against 
Paine’s Deism set forth that there are as great difficulties in 
the God as in the Christ question, which John perceived to be 
true, he became sceptical as to the existence of Deity, in which 
he was more confirmed by Fenelon’s sta'ement that Aristotle 
maintained that the world is eternal; that one generation of 
men has always produced another without ever having a begin¬ 
ning. “ If there had been a first man, he must have been born 
without father or mother, which is repugnant to nature.” Fen- 
elon says Aristotle “makes the same observations with respect 
to birds.” He says, it is impossible that there could have been 
a first egg to give the beginning of birds, or that there should 
have been a first bird which gave the beginning to eggs, for a 
bird comes from an egg. He reasoned in the same manner of 
other species, or beings which people the world; and though 
this may not rightly represent Aristotle as to the eternity of 
the forms of life, it does truly represent his doctrine as to the 
eternal existence of the matter of which these forms consist, 
and the statement led John to a train of thought as to how 
organisms might be “without the meddling of the Gods.” 

John married Margaret Reynolds in August 1839. In 1842 
they began business as booksellers, etc. Her experience in 
business and her untiring energy, combined with her and her 
husband’s frugality made it successful, and enabled them to 
quit it, in 1850. They had learned to believe that in America a 
system of Free Inquiry prevailed, and that it and almost Uni¬ 
versal Suffrage works well. A false statement respecting New 
Harmony induced John and Margaret to buy land and make 
investments there in 184G, with the intention of emigrating 


JOHN CHAPPELL SMI TIT. 


845 


there, as they did, in July 1850, where they continued their lives 
of industry, though not in business. 

The headquarters of the United States Geological Survey 
of the Western States was established there. The Director 
requested John to make drawings cf scenery, fossils, geological 
sections, and maps. He made an unusually elaborate investiga¬ 
tion of the results of a tornado* which occurred near New Har¬ 
mony. This report was published in the Smithsonian “Contri¬ 
butions to Knowledge,” and was distributed to the Scientific 
Societies of the world. He wrote an article on “The Theories of 
Storms” which was translated into German and published by 
the “Imperial Geographical Institute” of Austria, of which he 
was an honorary member. He made up by extensive reading, 
in the later years of his life, for the deficiencies in that matter 
of his earlier years; and, therefore, he wrote for various period¬ 
icals, on various subjects; endeavoring to state useful truths, 
irrespective of party or of personal preferences, displaying 
anti-religious ideas, and scepticism in regard to a Divine ruler. 
John and Margaret wrote articles for the “ New Harmony 
Advertiser” on the Lincoln side of politics, and on other sub¬ 
jects in that and other local journals. Margaret gave five lec- 
tuies in New Harmony on corals and coral-reefs, which were 
much commended by Dr. D. Dale Owen. 

During the twenty-six years of quiet life which Margaret and 
John Chappellsmith have passed at New Harmony they have 
been constant readers, thinkers and writers. They have kept 
themselves fully advised of the leading thought of the Thinkers 
of the world as from time to time the same has been produced. 
There are very few connubial pairs in any country who have 
more closely watched and noted the steady evolution of thought, 
philosophy, and science than this retiring, unassuming couple. 
Had they been as ambitious as many aspiring writers, and had 
the productions of their pens been placed in book form many 
volumes of theirs might now grace the libraries and center- 
tables of England and America. Long may the peaceful lives 
of this worthy pair be continued, and together may they pla¬ 
cidly descend to the quiet tomb of rest. 


846 


DARWIN. 


DARWIN. 

Charles J. Darwin, F.R.S., is recognized as one of the most 
eminent of living naturalists and physical philosophers. He 
has acquired a world-wide distinction for his discoveries in 
geology and zoology. His name has been given to a theory 
that occupies the most prominent place in the development of 
modern philosophy. 

Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, February 12, 1809. He 
received his education at the grammar school of his native 
town. In 1825 he entered the university at Edinburgh. After 
remaining there two years he went to Christ’s College, Cam¬ 
bridge, where he graduated in 1831. In the autumn of the same 
year he volunteered to accompany Captain Fitzroy as naturalist 
in his famous Heagle expedition, and was accepted. The Beagle 
set sail December 27, 1831, for the survey of South America and 
the circumnavigation of the globe. It did not return until Oc¬ 
tober, 1836. Shortly after, Dhrwin published his recorded observ- 
tions in his “Voyage of a Naturalist Round the World,” This 
valuable work obtained great popularity and immense sale. 
The “ London Quarterly Review ” for December, 1839, makes 
this mention of it: “The author is a first-rate landscape painter 
with the pen, and the dreariest solitudes are made to teem with 
interest.” 

In 1839 he published a “Journal of Researches into the 
Geology and Natural History of Countries visited by H. M. S. 
Beagle.” This was regarded by scientists as an excellent and 
remarkable work. Darwin resided in London until 1842. He 
afterwards removed to his country house, near Bromley in 
Kent. He married in 1839. 

His papers and contributions on scientific subjects are too 
numerous to admit of lengthy mention here. The two works 
already named were succeeded by the “ Zoology of the Voyage 
of the Bengle,” “Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,” 
“Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands,” “Geological 


DARWIN. 


817 

Observations in South America,” “The Monograph of the Fam¬ 
ily Cerripedia,” and his two great works upon which his reputa¬ 
tion chiefly rests, “ The Origin of Species,” aud “ The Descent of 
Man,” with his two latest works, which are now agitating the 
scientific world, ‘‘Animal-Eating Plants,” and “The Expression 
of Emotions in Man and Animals.” These works are eagerly 
sought after and perused not only by the professional scientists, 
but by the great intellectual public. They are all written in a 
pleasing style, and abound with weighty arguments and a vast 
array of facts. 

The following is a compendious summary of Darwin’s doc¬ 
trine: All organic beings are liable to vary in some degree, and 
tend to transmit such variations in their offspring. All at the 
same time tend to increase at a very rapid rate, and their 
increase is kept in check by the incessant competition of other 
individuals of the same species, or by physical conditions inju¬ 
rious to each organism or to its power of leaving healthy off¬ 
spring. Whatever variation occurring among the individuals 
of any species of animals or plants is in any way advanta¬ 
geous in the struggle for existence, will give to those indi¬ 
viduals an advantage over their fellows, which will be inher¬ 
ited by their offspring until the modified variety supplants the 
parent species. This process, termed natural selection, is inces¬ 
santly at work, and all organized beings are undergoing its 
operations. By the steady accumulation, dming long ages of 
time, of slight differences, each in some way beneficial to the 
individual, arise the various modifications of structure by 
which the countless forms of animal and vegetable life are dis¬ 
tinguished from each other. All existing animals have descend¬ 
ed from, at most, only four or five progenitors, and plants from 
an equal or lesser number. Analogy would even lead to the 
inference that all the organic beings which have ever lived on 
this earth have descended from some one primordial form into 
which life was at first breathed. 

How this doctrine affects the Bible account of the special cre¬ 
ation of each species, will be at once obvious to every reader. 
As a geologist, Darwin ranks among the very first of the day. 
His work on zoology is immounced the most remarkable work 
on that subject produced during the present century. Alto- 


848 


DAP* WIN. 


gether his writings have contributed greatly to the existing 
knowledge of hitherto obscure branches of science, and are con¬ 
sidered by Naturalists as a model of the manner in which works 
of this class should be written. 

Concerning his famous doctrine of Natural Selection, he says; 
“ Let it be borne in mind what an endless number of strange 
peculiarities our domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, 
those under nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary ten¬ 
dency is. Under domestication, it may be truly said that the 
whole organization becomes in some degree plastic. Let it be 
borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the 
mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to 
their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought im¬ 
probable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly 
occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each 
being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes 
occur in the course of thousands of generations ? If such do 
occur, can we doubt that individuals having any advantage, 
however slight, over others, would have the best chance of 
surviving and procreating their kind ? On the other hand, we 
may feel sure that any variation, in the least degree injurious, 
would be rigidly destroyed. The preservation of favorable vari¬ 
ations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural 
Selection.” 

When Darwin landed in England from the Beagle, his health 
was greatly shattered, and he has been unable since to pursue 
his scientific labors without considerable interruption. In addi¬ 
tion to his membership to the Boyal Society, he is a member of 
most of the English and foreign scientific societies. In 1853 tho 
Royal Society awarded him their gold medal for his various 
scientific works, and in 1859 the Geological Society awarded him 
their Wollaston Palladian medal. 

Charles J. Darwin is one of those rare and remarkable men 
who have attained an equal eminence in literature and science. 
He is a thorough Liberal and disputer of the supernatural, and 
his works have doubtless done more than those of any other 
writer of this age to diffuse skepticism among the learned and 
scientific classes, and to popularize Infidelity. 


D. R. BURT, 


849 


D. R. BURT. 

Daniel R. Burt was born in the town of Florida, Montgom¬ 
ery County, New York, February 29, 1804. His parents were 
poor and of English descent. When he was ten years of age 
his parents moved to the western part of the State. His father 
was for several years an invalid, and died in 1827. The care of 
the large family devolved upon Daniel, and it was with the 
greatest efforts he was able so to manage as to keep all comfort¬ 
ably provided for, on a farm of fifty-five acres. Western New 
York at that time was a new country, and schools were scarce. 
This, with the demands for labor, gave Daniel no opportunities 
for acquiring an education. When sixteen years of age he was 
unable to read. Feeling the need of education, he applied him¬ 
self to learning, so far as he could, besides managing the farm 
and paying off the debts which Lad been contracted during his 
father’s seven years’ illness. During the following four years 
he was able to devote ten months to study, and at the end of 
that time he had made such proficiency that the master pro¬ 
nounced him as good a scholar as himself. In mathematics he 
was especially good. 

When eleven years of age a serious accident befel him. A 
tree fell upon him and injured his head badly. He was uncon¬ 
scious several hours, and the blood flowed from his nose, ears, 
and mouth. This was doubtless the cause of the deafness that 
subsequently afflicted him. One ear became deaf when twenty- 
six years of age, and the other twenty years later. For several 
years he has been so deaf as to require the constant use of an 
ear-trumx>et. For one specially fond of society and conversa¬ 
tion, this has been a very great affliction. 

While still a youth he was unusually well developed, physic¬ 
ally, and very athletic and active. He was very fond of wrest¬ 
ling and other similar sports, and was more than a match for 
the larger share of his companions. He is fully six feet in 
height and his usual weight has been from two hundred aud fif¬ 
teen to two hundred and twenty-five pounds. 


850 


D. R. BURT. 


In April, 1827, he moved into Canada West, now Ontario, and 
four years after to Tecumseh, Mich. In September, 1831 he 
married Miss Ashley, a native of Clermont, N. H. They had 
three children, one of whom died; a son and daughter still 
living. 

Mr. Burt’s parents, brothers and sisters, were close-com¬ 
munion Baptists, but he did not join the Church, and was indif¬ 
ferent upon the subject. When, however, he lost, by death a 
loved and cherished sister, and his oldest child, and his wife 
was brought to the verge of the grave, his sympathetic nature 
was touched. At this time a church revival was prevailing. A 
strong magnetic preacher of the Methodist persuasion talked 
much to him and induced him to think if he vrould “come 
to Jesus,” and would cast himself at his feet, and have his 
name registered in the “Lamb’s book of life,” that his sorrows 
would be removed, and that his wife would recover. Under the 
influence thus imperceptibly won over him, he yielded to the 
persuasion, and for the time being embraced Jesus and the 
Church. But the magnetic influence soon passed from him, and 
he saw alike the futility of his profession and the mistake he 
had made. He was no longer a Christian nor a believer in 
revivalism. From that time he commenced reading the Bible, 
to see what it contained, and to look more into the nature of 
the various creeds of the day. He also read many other works 
bearing upon theology, and from that time he has been a con¬ 
firmed and consistent unbeliever in supernaturalism and secta¬ 
rianism— a decided Infidel and Materialist. 

During the five years passed in Michigan he was occupied in 
building mills and fitting up machinery, as well as in real-estate 
operations. In 1835 he journeyed Westward, visiting Northern 
Indiana, Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, and Eastern 
Iowa. He traveled mostly on foot, as at that time there were 
little other facilities for traveling. His average daily walks 
were thirty-five and forty miles, and during three months he 
rested but a single week. He traveled eighty-five days, and 
passed over considerable more than three thousand miles. On 
December 27, 1835, he traveled over seventy miles, following the 
Mississippi, and without a house, track, or trail to denote a 
human being had passed there. It was a bitter cold day. but 


D. R. BURT. 


851 


the larger streams wero not frozen deeply enough to bear his 
weight, and he sometimes found himself in water nearly to his 
arms, and his clothes froze upon him as he walked. It may 
easily be imagined that he was glad to arrive at the little vil- 1 * 
lage of Rock Island and to partake of a coarse supper, to en¬ 
joy a “big Dutch fire,” and a wolf-skin bed upon the rough 
floor. On another occasion he traveled across unsettled prai¬ 
ries and through forests, the snow a foot deep, but without a 
track, and at night he laid down and slept in the snow. Full 
of vigor as he was, he minded not these great exertions, but 
8£>ed over hill and dale with the ease of an elk. Often had he 
to cross prairies in snow storms, and at night, and more than 
once was lie lost and had to lay down in the snow without sup¬ 
per, with the cry of hungry wolves in plain hearing. He climb¬ 
ed steep bluffs, forded streams and rivers, often by swimming, 
and all with dauntless courage. 

The free, expansive, unfettered life in the young West and 
on the frontier suited Mr. Burt’s tastes. He decided to settle 
in Grant County, Wisconsin, where he located several thousand 
acres of land; built two saw-mills, two flouring-mills, two small 
wollen-mills, and a small flouring-mill and a saw-mill for the 
United States Government. He opened up a number of farms 
and built several dwellings. His operations in real-estate were 
extensive. His farming operations were often on a large scale. 
Some years he raised as high as 8,000 bushels of grain. 

In 1841 he was elected to the Territorial Legislature of Wis¬ 
consin, and served two years. He was a member of the Consti¬ 
tutional Convention in 1846. In 1847-48 he served a second term 
in the Legislature, and was regarded as one of the most influ¬ 
ential members. He firmly opposed the election of a chaplain 
for the Legislature, as well as the exemption of church property 
from taxation; and this over thirty years ago. He frequently 
made animated speeches in defense of his position. For a num¬ 
ber of years he served upon the County Board, and other 
offices were tendered him, which he declined. His popularity 
was great; ho always obtained more than a regular party vote. 
He, doubtless, could easily have been a high officer of the State 
had his ambition led him in that direction, and had he taken 
the advice of friends in the matter. 

He resided in Grant County twenty-one years, and afterwards 


852 


D. R. BURT. 


removed to Dunleith, III., where in 1857 he built a manufactory 
and engaged extensively in the manufacture of wood-working 
machinery, smut-mills, etc. After accumulating a handsome 
competence, he had the misfortune several years ago to lose 
his establishment by fire, and was uninsured. Fully $40,000 
went on that occasion. But not stopping to repine at his loss, 
he immediately resolved to rebuild, which he did on a more 
extensive scale than before, and to continue his business. His 
labors were attended with very fair financial success, and he 
has been able to present some $75,000 to his children and still 
retains considerable land in Wisconsin. 

Upon the death of J. M. Beckett, of Boston, one of the orig¬ 
inal Trustees of the Paine Hall Fund, on the first of June, 1872, 
Mr. J. P. Mendum wrote to Mr. Burt, requesting him to act as 
Trustee in place of the deceased. Upon the grounds of dis¬ 
tance and the infirmities of age and deafness, Mr. Burt thought 
he was not as suitable a person for the position as some others 
might be, but expressed a willingness to serve if desirable. Mr. 
Mendum placed him upon the Board, and he v 7 as duly adver¬ 
tised as a trustee in subsequent numbers of “The Investiga¬ 
tor.” Within a few months afterwards Mr. Lick donated to the 
Paine Hall Fund and the Lecture Fund his Mill property near 
San Jose, Cal. He deeded it to the five trustees, including Mr. 
Burt, naming each Trustee. This action of Mr. Lick made Mr. 
Burt a bona fide legal trustee. 

It is well to state in connection, that Mr. Stew^art McKee, of 
St. Louis, for personal service rendered, felt himself under 
special obligations to Mr. Burt, and imposed to make him a 
present of $1,000. Mr. Burt declined to accept the gift, and 
urged him instead to give it to the Paine Hall and Lecture 
Fund. Mr. McKee acted upon this advice and so made the 
donation. After Mr. Burt became Trustee, he performed a 
journey of fifteen hundred miles and visited his friend McKee, 
and persuaded him to make another donation of $1,000 in the 
same direction. 

In April, 1873, it became desirable to sell the Lick property 
in California, and Mr. Burt v r as requested to make a journey 
for that purpose. Mr. J. P. Mendum, May 29, 1873, wrote to 
Mr. Burt as follows: “We think you are the most proper man 


D. R. BURT. 


853 


to send to look after the Lick property, and we hope you will 
proceed on your journey just as soon as you can conveniently 
do so. We have fall confidence in your judgment, and shall 
trust entirely to you to dispose of, or turn the property as you 
may think best.” Other similar letters from the same source 
followed. Accordingly, on the first of June following, Mr. 
Burt started for California, and spent four months there in dis¬ 
posing of the property. He caused it to be advertised exten¬ 
sively ; he placed it in the hands of several of the leading real- 
estate dealers in the State, and on every sale day for seventy- 
five days it was offered at public auction by Maurice, Doer & 
Co., large real-estate dealers in San Francisco, and without 
finding a purchaser. Mr. Burt eventually effected a sale of the 
property at $18,000 in gold, or about $20,000 in currency, which 
money was forwarded to Mr. Mendum, Treasurer of the Board. 
Mr. Burt paid some two hundred and fifty dollars for expenses 
out of his own pocket, and made no charge for it or for his time. 
Mr. Mendum acknowledged the value of Mr. Burt’s services 
in a letter dated September 24, 1873, as follows: “We are very 
well pleased with what you have done, and feel confident no 
one could have done any better. This is no flattery, but really 
our feelings.” In a letter a month later, the same writer said: 
“ I am requested, by my associate-trustees, to return you our 
sincere thanks for the very faithful manner in which you have 
transacted the business for us.” In a subsequent letter, he 
again wrote: “I again repeat to you that we have entire confi¬ 
dence in your having done the best that any one could have 
done, and you have our heartiest thanks.” On December 16, 
1874, Mr. Horace Seaver wrote Mr. Burt as follows: “I feel we 
are a great deal indebted to you for its erection, (Paine Hall,) 
as you sold the California property which enabled us to make 
a start.” On the day of the dedication of the Hall, January 
29, 1875, public approval of Mr. Burt’s conduct was made upon 
the platform in the Hall by one or both of the gentlemen 
named. Mr. Burt’s chagrin can be imagined when, in less than 
twenty days afterwards, these same men charged him with 
“incoinpetency,” with “ frittering the property away,” and with 
selling it “for a song,” and he well understood that an inter¬ 
ested motive prompted the change of language. 


854 


D. B. BUET, 


Waiving a full account of the Paine Hall “ unpleasantness 99 
truth compels the statement that Mr. Burt felt an ardent inter¬ 
est in the enterprise and was very anxious it should be properly 
and legally vested in a board of trutees, for posterity. He 
keenly felt the slight when the three Boston trustees assayed 
to drop Mr. Altman and himself from the board, simply because 
Mr. A. refused to sign mortgage notes, personally, instead of as 
trustee. Mr. Burt made no such objection and Mr. A. had no 
power to make it for him. The least that can be said is, that 
the difficulty is a matter of deep regret by all friends of the 
movement. In addition, it should be remarked that for a third 
of a century Mr. Burt was a 'warm and zealous friend of “ The 
Boston Investigator.” He procured many subscribers to it and 
often paid the dues for others out of his own pocket, amount¬ 
ing in the agregate to hundreds of dollars. He has felt a 
lively interest in every Liberal movement and the country con¬ 
tains no more whole-souled, earnest worker in the cause of 
mental liberty than D. K. Burt. 

About the year 1865 he married a second wife, having lost 
his first some years before. 

As an indication of Mr. Burt’s generosity, which is a promi¬ 
nent trait of his character, it is but just to state that he has at 
different times taken orphan children into his family and 
clothed and educated them in the kindest manner, and in no 
instance did he find it necessary to use any severity or punish¬ 
ment. By his positive control he was enabled to govern by the 
law of kindness. Fourteen poor and friendless orphans has he 
thus given homes. 

Another characteristic of his is worthy of mention. In his 
intercourse with men some two score of persons have died 
indebted to him in various sums from twenty-five to tw^o hun¬ 
dred dollars. In these cases he has invariably felt it his duty 
to forgive the debt which death thus cancelled, and to bring no 
demand against the estate or surviving members of the families. 

It may be proper to state, in closing, that Mr. Burt possesses 
a positive magnetic nature and within the last few years he has 
discovered that he possesses the !>ower of removing pain and dis¬ 
ease by “the laying on of hands” and by gentle manipulations. 
Ho has treated hundreds of affiicted persons most successfully 


D. R. BURT. 


855 


and has in this way effected many astonishing cures. He takes 
great pleasure-in doing good to his suffering fellow beings in this 
manner and makes no charge for his services. Indeed, he has 
traveled thousands of miles at his own expense for the sake of 
benefiting others. This magnetic power has aided him on certain 
occasions to overawe and hold malicious persons in check. It 
has aided him in controlling deliberative bodies and individuals. 
He utterly discards all idea of supernaturalism and “spirit aid” 
in the effect he thus produces and regards the power he pos¬ 
sesses as entirely materialistic, and wholly the result of his own 
physical organization. He asserts that he has on numerous 
occasions by the action of his will power been able to so effect 
the clouds over his head as to divert them and prevent the 
rain falling upon him when it was freely descending in all direc- 
directions within a few hundred feet of him. This statement 
may startle some who are incredulous, but Mr. Burt is certain 
this result has been produced repeatedly by his own mental 
and physical efforts. Many who have heard him relate these 
facts and who know his perfect truthfulness have requested 
him to publish a statement of the cases, but his diffidence and 
the knowledge of the general incredulity upon subjects of this 
kind have prevented his doing so. 

The writer has found a warm, true friend in Mr. Burt, and 
trusts he may never forget the kindness received from him. 
Mr. Burt objected, when approached upon the subject, to hav¬ 
ing his name enrolled among the world’s great thinkers and 
reformers, feeling himself unworthy of such distinction, but 
the writer takes great pleasure in according simple justice to a 
brave, devoted, earnest pioneer and worker in the cause of 
American Liberalism; one who, indeed, is a thinker, and who, 
had more favorable conditions attended him in early life, would 
have distinguished himself in the field of thought. As a faith¬ 
ful, unselfish friend, he has few superiors; as a lover of justice 
and truth, no man takes precedence over him; as one having 
sympathy and kindly feelings for the suffering and the unfor¬ 
tunate, very few excel him; as an honorable, generous, high- 
toned man, but few equal him. May D. B. Burt still live 
many years to administer to the comfort and happiness of his 
numerous steadfast friends. 


856 


HORACE SEAVER. 


HORACE SEAYER. 

This veteran Freethought Editor was born in one of the early 
years of the nineteenth century, but precisely which year the 
writer is unable to designate. Like some coy maidens of uncer¬ 
tain age, the Editor declines to give the date of his birth. 
Suffice it to say that for more than a third of a century he has 
been a shining light in the firmament of American Liberalism, 
having for that length of time been the honored Editor of the 
‘‘Boston Investigator,” the oldest living Freethought journal 
in America and probably in the world. 

In early life Mr. Seaver learned “the art preservative of all 
arts”—printing —and was employed upon “The Boston Inves¬ 
tigator,” when under the management of the brave Abner 
Kneeland and when in consequence of Christian arrest, trial 
and imprisonment Mr. Kneeland was compelled to sever his 
connection with the paper it devolved upon Horace Seaver and 
Josiah P. Mendum to assume the control of it —the former as 
Editor and the latter as publisher—and very acceptably to the 
Liberals of the United States have they performed their long 
continued labors. In 1830 Mr. Seaver printed the first volume 
of the “Investigator” for Mr. Kneeland and continued to print 
it during the time it was under the control of the latter, and 
the commencement of his own editorial management was the 
beginning of his literary labors and of his public career. 

It is hardly necessary to here name the characteristic doc¬ 
trines of the “ Investigator.” Suffice it to say they have been of 
a decided materialistic character and it has perhaps been con¬ 
ducted more from a metaphysical standpoint than strictly in 
keeping with the later rules of modern science. If Mr. Seaver 
has not been regarded as a brilliant writer he has at least been 
persistent and consistent in the even tenor of the way he has 
pursued. He has been an attentive reader and an ardent ad¬ 
mirer of several modern writers, notably Buckie, Huxley, and 
Draper and has not been unwilling to avail himself of the 


HORACE SEAYER. 


857 


thoughts they have produced. Some of Mr. Seaver’s admired 
editorials have shown his own thoughts to be in harmony with 
theirs. It must be admitted that the ability to perceive the 
excellent qualities and brilliant ideas of others, and the will¬ 
ingness to adopt them and be benefited by them is scarcely 
inferior to the capacity of originating them ourselves. 

Besides his editorial labors Mr. Seaver has performed much 
service as public speaker, frequently addressing Liberal and 
Spiritualistic audiences in the vicinity of Boston. If lie is not a 
powerful orator, and if he may sometimes be thought to lack in 
concentrativeness, logic and deep penetration, he is earnest in 
his efforts and takes a pleasure in imparting his views to liis 
fellow beings. He may truthfully be styled a pleasant, impres¬ 
sive speaker. 

Early in life Mr. Seaver married a lady with whom he lived 
with almost unalloyed happiness, save perhaps by the thin 
husk which always covers the rich grain of connubial bliss. 
He buried this wife many years ago and has since lived a wid¬ 
ower, rich in the memories her pure life produced. At her 
funeral he introduced a bold and brave innovation into Infidel 
society — that of a social funeral, instead of a priestly conducted 
ceremony. He addressed the mourning circle of friends, and 
the address was printed in pamphlet form, and is admired by 
readers as a model of eloquence, pathos and fine sentiment. 

Mr. Seaver is entitled to the credit of unselfishness in a 
monetary point of view. He is not avaricious, he is not merce¬ 
nary. He craves no more money than is needful to supply the 
wants of life. He may be obstinate and persistent in contend¬ 
ing for the conceived rights of his coadjutor, but those who 
know them him best are well aware it does not proceed from 
greed or avarice on his part. 

Horace Seaver has been a sturdy soldier in the army of 
advancing freethought. For many long years he has faithfully 
upheld the banner of mental liberty and human progress. He 
has been one of the small number who are willing to spend a 
lifetime in advocating unpopular truths. A debt of honor and 
gratitude is due him from every lover of truth and every hater 
of superstition in the land. 


858 


JOSIAH fc. ME.NDUM, 


JOSIAII P 0 MENDUM. 


The publisher of the “ Boston Investigator ” for nearly forty 
years, is said to be some two or three years the junior of its 
editor. With Mr. Seaver he was the direct successor of Abner 
Kneeland, who founded that paper in 1830 and conducted it 
nearly seven years. When Mr. Mendum became its proprietor 
the prospects of immediate financial success were anything but 
flattering. But economy was brought into use and made to 
serve in the place of wealth and extensive patronage. For many 
years the publication of the paper was conducted in an attic or 
in a limited upper room. By persistent energy, close applica¬ 
tion, an upright course of conduct, and judicious management, 
Mr. Mendum has been able to bring “The Investigator’* and 
his publishing business from the low stage in which he found 
it up to the proud condition it now occupies. By a prudent 
course of conduct with success in some outside ventures, Mr. 
Mendum has been fortunate enough to accumulate a comforta¬ 
ble competence. 

He lias published and sold numerous thousands of volumes 
of the works of Voltaire, D’Holbach, Paine, Robert Taylor, 
Volney, Cooper, and numerous other writers, and it is not easy 
to estimate the aid he has thus rendered in helping those in 
the search of truth to take a correct view of all theological 
subjects. The publication of Freethought literature has been 
an unpopular and not over-remunerative avocation, but strictly 
and faithfully has Mr. Mendum pursued it. 

On April 13, 1872, he had the misfortune to lose his wife, 
Elizabeth, the partner of liis joys and sorrows, and who for 
many years had been an uncomplaining and patient sufferer. 
She was a careful mother, a devoted wife, and a most excellent 
woman. Appropriate remarks were made at her funeral by 
Horace Seaver and Wendell Phillips. The void caused by her 
death has never been filled. 

Nearly ten years ago began to be agitated the building of a 


JOS I An r. MENDUM. 


859 


Public Hall to commemorate the memory of Thomas Paine, to 
afford a platform for free speech, and also to furnish a home 
for “The Investigator.” As early as 1870 or 71, donations began 
to be made for this purpose by people in various parts of the 
country. A Board of five Trustees was appointed or elected, 
consisting of Horace Seaver, J. P. Mendum, J. M. Beckett, and 
T. L. Savage of Boston, and Morris Altman of New York. Mr. 
Mendum was elected Treasurer. In June, 1870, Mr. Beckett 
died, and D. R. Burt was appointed by Mr. Mendum to take 
his place. Soon after, James Lick of San Francisco donated his 
Alviso mill property near San Jose, Cal., to the Paine Hall and 
to the Lecturer’s Fund, and deeded it in trust to the live Trus¬ 
tees, including Mr. Burt. This action of Mr. Lick constituted 
each member of the Board an actual and legal Trustee. In 1873 
this Lick property was sold by D. R. Burt, (who went to Cali¬ 
fornia for the purpose) for the sum of nearly $20,000. In May, 
1874, a lot was purchased in Appleton Street, Boston, and in 
course of the season the Hall, a beautiful structure of four 
stories, was erected, costing about $75,000, exclusive of ground. 

When, in 1874, the mortgage notes were sent to Mr. Altman 
for the signature of himself and wife, he refused to sign them, 
upon the ground that they were made out as private personal 
notes, instead of Trustees. He returned the notes unsigned. 
This action on the part of Mr. Altman offended Mr. Mendum, 
and he decided to drop Messrs. Altman and Burt from the 
Board, and to proceed in the erection of the Hall independent 
of them. Mr. Mendum has been censured for this course as 
being unwarranted and illegal. If the provocation was suffi¬ 
cient to justify the dropping of Mr. Altman, it did not apply to 
Mr. Burt, who did not refuse to sign the mortgage notes. This 
action on the part of Mr. Mendum has lead to an unpleasant 
state of things, greatly to be regretted by every friend of his. 

In the Spring of 1877 the title of the property was transfer¬ 
red to a board of trustees of five persons, of which Messrs. 
Mendum and Seaver were members. Funds, however, for the 
liquidation of the debt coming in slowly, on Oct. 27, 1877, the 
property was sold by foreclosure of the second mortgage, sub¬ 
ject to the first mortgage of $50,000. Mr. Mendum was forced 
to buy it or to lose several thousand dollars he had advanced. 


860 


LUTHER COLBY. 


LUTHER COLBY. 


The veteran editor of the “Banner of Light” was born in 
Amesbury, Mass., October 12, 1S14 At the age of fifteen years 
he went to Exeter, New Hampshire, to learn the printer’s 
trade. Captain John S. Sleeper making arrangements with his 
employer, the Exeter “News Letter” was brought out. Mr. 
Colby worked on that paper for some time. Mr. Sleeper removing 
to Lowell, Mr. Colby went there and worked with him awhile. 

Soon after attaining his majority, Mr, Colby went to Boston, 
in 1836, and was given a permanent situation as a journeyman 
printer on the “Post,” one of the leading daily papers of the 
city. Here he remained for some twenty years, passing, during 
that time, through every grade, from the composing to the edi¬ 
torial room. He then left the “Post” and started the “Banner of 
Light,” April 11,1857, under the tirm name of Luther Colby & Co. 
Some time before opening up this new enterprise, Mr. Colby had 
become interested in the subject of Spiritualism, and, after 
receiving what to him appeared to be indubitable evidence of 
its truthfulness, he fearlessly embarked on its public advocacy, 
a duty which he has since continuously discharged. His first 
partner, William Berry, entered the army and was killed at the 
battle of Antietam. Mr. Colby was, by the business stress inci¬ 
dent to that trying time of war, forced to go into bankruptcy; 
but the papei^ was continued by William White and Isaac B. 
Bich, Mr. Colby joining the new firm of William White & Co., 
and still continuing his duty as managing editor. At the decease 
of Mr White, the firm became known to the business portion 
of the community by its present name; i. e., Colby & Rich. 

There are but few editors in the country who have so devot¬ 
edly and so constantly toiled at the desk as has Mr. Colby. For 
nearly a generation has he plodded on in his own peculiar 
way, keeping the single object of his life steadily in view. 
It is impossible to estimate the great influence he has wielded, 
and the vast amount of opinion he has been instrumental in 
forming. 


PARKER PILLSBURY. 


861 


PARKER PILLSBURY, 

This brave, earnest advocate of human and mental liberty is 
understood to be a son of New England and of the middle or 
farmer class. He was born about the year 1812. In his youth 
or early manhood he for awhile drove a stage from Boston to 
Lynn, long before there were any railroads in the country. 
After this he turned his mind to acquiring an education and he 
decided to prepare himself for a preacher. He went through 
Andover College and graduated as a Congregational minister, but 
he early found it was not the field suited to his belief or his 
tastes. From the orthodox creed he gravitated to ultra Radical¬ 
ism. He espoused the cause of the slave and worked for years in 
connection with Wm. Lloyd Garrison in advocating the rights 
of the oppressed and in opposing the wrongs of slavery. He 
was an efficient, scathing speaker and on hundreds of rostrums 
was his voice raised in condemnation of the crimes of human 
slavery. Garrison used to say to his friends that the slave 
porver dreaded three persons and these were Parker Pills bury, 
Henry C. Wright, and Stephen S. Foster. The advocates of 
slavery were obliged to quail before them. 

Many years ago Mr. Pillsbury wrote and published a work 
entitled, “Pious Frauds,” in which he exposed the untruthful¬ 
ness of the Christian creed, built as it is upon a pretended revel¬ 
ation. It w r as a heavy blow at the false pretences of orthodoxy. 

After the death of slavery Mr. Pillsbury occupied other por¬ 
tions of the great field of reform. He is a man of broad, expan¬ 
sive views and his ideas of reform were not solely confined to 
the subject of slavery. Temperance, Labor Reform, Woman’s 
Rights, anti-ecclesiasticism, etc., equally enlisted his warmest 
sympathies and support. In 1868 he joined with Elizabeth Cady 
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in conduc' ing “The Revolution” 
an able advocate of Woman’s Rights and Female Suffrage. Mr. 
Pillsbury’s articles were specially able. Since then he has been 
much in the Liberal lecture field. 


862 


WENDELL PHILLIPS. 


WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Greece had her Demosthenes, Rome her Cicero, and America 
has her Phillips; three names which rank first of all as synony¬ 
mous of eloquence, and around which cluster the brightest 
and most glorious memories of the Acropolis, the Forum, and 
the Rostrum. The eloquence of Demosthenes has eclipsed the 
glory of Ulysses’warlike deeds. The orations of Cicero will be 
heard in the classic walls of the future university, when Julius 
Caesar’s rebellion and conquests have ceased to interest the 
historical reader, and the burning words of Phillips, uttered in 
defense of Freedom, and the Rights of Man, have seared their 
way into the heart of history and are destined to illume its 
pages forever. Wendell Phillips, belongs, by birth, to the old¬ 
est and proudest line of American aristocracy: he is a patrician 
of the finest blood, yet he has from the first cast his lot with 
the toiling masses — has shown himself the truest of Democrats. 

Inheriting talents of the highest order, and a fortune of 
ample proportions, he early in life dedicated both to the service 
of Humanity. 

This distinguished man was born in the city of Boston, 
November 29, 1811, and educated in Harvard, graduating in 
1831. He choose law as a.profession and was admitted to the 
bar in 1834; but although he found himself rapidly rising to the 
first rank in his profession he left it at the end of two years, 
and joining the ranks of the then despised and persecuted 
Abolitionists, he became one of, if not the most noted and 
famous of that immortal band of heroes, who for forty years 
fought that giant crime, that sum of all villianies, American 
Slavery, and its allies the American politician, and the Ameri¬ 
can priest. 

He achieved national fame in 1837, through his memorable 
Fanueil IJall speech, delivered before a meeting called by the 
immortal Charming to express public condemnation of the 
assassination of Lovejoy, at Alton. Attorney General Austin 


WEND Fit, PHILLIPS. 


833 


had taken advantage of tho occasion to utter a bitter pro¬ 
slavery harrangue, the gist of which was that Lovejoy deserved 
his fate. 

As he resumed his feat, Wendell Phillips —then a young 
man of twenty-six summers — sprang to his feet and electrified 
tho vast audience by a speech of such eloquence, and logic, and 
force, as had never been heard, even in that old cradle of 
liberty. 

From this time forth until the shackles fell from the limbs 
of the Negro, Wendell Phillips gave his life with all its powers 
and endowments to the cause of the slave, without other reward 
than the approval of his conscience, and the blessings of the 
poor. Nor was this all, he not only labored without money and 
without price, but he gave freely of liis inherited fortune to 
the poor and for the promotion of the cause to which he was 
devoted. 

Since the Avar of the Rebellion Mr. Phillips has given his 
attention actively to the subject of the wrongs of the American 
working man and woman, and also to the rights and wrongs 
of the Indians of this country. The popular prejudice against 
him, resulting from his defense of the rights of the slave, having 
subsided, liis splendid talents are more appreciated, and he is in 
demand as a lyceum lecturer; and if lie could be induced to select 
popular themes, he could command the largest prices; but of such 
stuff is he made, that he uses his power, not to make money, but 
to compel a hearing upon the Indian question, or the rights of 
Labor. Wendell Phillips is sixty-five years old, and liis splen¬ 
did crest is crowned with the silver badge of age, but his pow¬ 
ers are at their best, and his form of almost faultless perfection 
and majesty seems untouched by the weight of years. 

He has lived a life of the greatest simplicity and self-denial. 
He lias constantly forgotten himself in liis vivid recollections 
and recogni ions of the rights, the wrongs, and the needs of his 
fellows. But humanity can never forget Wendell Phillips. His 
name will be a household word throughout the civilized world 
forever, and his fame cast a lustre of resplendent glory upon 
the land of his oirth, -while it shall hold a place in history. 

He lias risen above theological superstitions and mysticisms, 
and worships only the true and the good. 


864 


DRAPEft. 


DRAPES 


Professor John W. Draper was born at St. Helen’s, near 
Liverpool, England, on May 5th, 1811. After an early and care¬ 
ful school training, he was placed under private instructors, and 
devoted his attention chiefly to the higher mathematics, chem¬ 
istry, and mental philosophy. He subsequently prosecuted his 
chemical studies at the University of London. 

In 1833 he came to America, whither several of his family 
had preceded him, and continued the study of chemistry and 
medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated 
, in 1836. He was soon after appointed Professor of Chemistry, 
Natural Philosophy, and Physiology in Hampden Sidney Col¬ 
lege, Virginia, w r here he devoted much time to scientific invest¬ 
igations, and contributed a valuable series of papers on physio¬ 
logical subjects to the “American Journal of Medical Sciences.” 
Three years later he became a resident of this City and Pro¬ 
fessor of Chemistry and Natural History in the academic de¬ 
partment of the “University of the City of New York,” and in 
1841 w T as appointed Professor of Chemistry in the Uniyersity 
Medical College, to which, ten years later, was added the de¬ 
partment of physiology. Dr. Draper resigned his position in 
the medical faculty several years ago, but still holds the posi¬ 
tion of President of the Scientific Department of the University. 

His scientific achievements have been remarkable. At a late 
meeting of the “American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” the 
“ Rumford Medal for Discoveries in Light or Heat” was awarded 
to him for his splendid researches and discoveries in the field 
of “Radiant Energy.” Among other discoveries of his in this 
field, there arc several relating to incandesence, spectrum anal¬ 
ysis, the nature of the rays absorbed in rhe growth of plants 
in sunlight, &c. The “American Academy” also believes that 
Dr. Draper’s claims to have been the first to apply the daguer¬ 
reotype process to taking portraits are just. 

But his literary labors have been not less remarkaDle. Be- 


DRAPER. 


865 


sides the many scientific treatises for which the world is in¬ 
debted to his pen, may be mentioned his “Though:s on the 
Future Civil Policy of America” (1865) and his “History of the 
American Civil War,” in three volumes, (1867-70). But previous to 
this, his “ History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” 
which appeared in 1863, hud created a profound impression 
through all the Western World. This important work was 
immediately republished in Engand, and translations of it have 
appeared in French, German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, 
Italian, and other modern languages. Portions of it relat ng to 
Mohammedanism have been translated into Arabic and Turk¬ 
ish. It is an interesting evidence of the value attached to this 
work in England that a movement has been organized in Lon¬ 
don to present a copy of it to such “ministers of the gospel” 
as may be unable to buy it. Dr. Draper has generously relin¬ 
quished his share in the profits o. the copies so given away. 
We have not to go far for the causes of this popularity. As the 
“Westminster Review” truly sa>s: “It is one of the not least 
remarkable achievements in the progress of the positive phi¬ 
losophy that have yet been made in the English tongue. A 
noble and even magnificent attempt to frame an induction from 
all the recorded phenomena of European, x\siatic, and North- 
African history. The strongly human sympathy and solicitude 
pervading this book is one of its most entrancing charms. Un¬ 
accustomed though a reader might be to scientific habits of 
thought or uninterested in the gradual elaboration of eternal 
rules and principles, here he can at least disport hirnse.f amidst 
noble galleries of historical paintings, and thrill again at the 
vision of the touching epochs that go to form the drama of the 
mighty European past. This is no dry enumeration of names 
and dates, no mere catalogue of isolated events and detached 
pieces of heartless mechanism. Rather does this work come to 
us as a mystic harmony, blending into one the treasured records 
of unnumbered histories and biographies, the accumulated stores 
of sciences the most opposed and erudition the most incongru¬ 
ous, now descending into slow and solemn depths of tone, as sin, 
cruelty, intolerance, form the theme, now again lo t in unap¬ 
proachable raptures of sound, as true greatness, endurance, 
self-control, are reflected in the grand turning-points of Euro- 


8G6 


DRAPER. 


pean story. What Comte showed might and ought to be done 
for the whole world of Man, what Mr. Buckle commenced for 
England, Scotland, France, and Spain, Dr. Draper has effected 
for the whole o!.‘ Europe. . . . All the latest researches in 

history, all the most recent discoveries in the realms of geol¬ 
ogy, mechanical science, natural science, and language, every 
minute particular that can explain or illustrate the general 
progress of all the European races from the most primitive 
ages, are accurately and copiously detailed in their several rela¬ 
tions. Nor is the author without such an art of representation 
as can render a book not only such as we ought to read, but 
also such as we like to read.” 

Dr. Draper’s lately published “ History of the Conflict between 
Religion and Science,” which has already passed through many 
editions, twenty-live thousand copies of which have been sold, 
is a fitting appendix to his “Intellectual Development.” In 
the “Conflict” he tersely and lucidly treats of The Origin of 
Science, The Origin of Christianity, The First or Southern 
Reformation, The Restoration of Science in the South, The 
Conflict Respecting the Nature of the Soul, The Conflict Re¬ 
specting the Nature of the World, The Controversy Respecting 
the Age of the Earth, The Conflict Respecting the Criterion of 
Truth, The Controversy Respecting the Government of the 
Universe, Latin Christianity in Relation to Modern Civilization, 
Science in Relation to Modem Civilization, and the Impending 
Crisis. 

It is gratifying to find such a fearless and outspoken Infidel 
as Dr. Draper held in such high honor by the noblest minds 
on both Continents. Such half-and-half Infidels as Agassiz and 
Emerson and other scientists and transcendentalists of that ilk 
make but a sorry figure by the side of sturdy Draper, Tyndall, 
Huxley, Spencer, and Darwin. Dr. Drape# has never flinched 
from any responsibility in his statements, and has written with 
entire fidelity to the demands of truth and justice. Still there 
is not a word in his books that can give offense to candid and 
fair-minded readers. The last two works named are among 
the most valuable contributions to the advanced literature of 
the world. Every seeker after truth should read and re-read 
them, though he is compelled to leave others unnoticed. 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 


867 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 

Stephen Pearl Andrews was born in the town of Templeton, 
in Worcester County, in the State of Massachusetts, the 22d day 
of March, 1812. His father was Rev. Elisha Andrews, a famous 
Baptist clergyman and revivalist, as well as a distinguished 
scholar, and a champion of religious and political freedom. 
The subject of this memoir went, when young, to Amherst, one 
of the seats of learning in Massachusetts, and on leaving there 
removed to the State of Louisiana, where a part of the family 
had preceded him. There lie studied law with an older brother, 
Thomas Lathrop Andrew's Esq., who stood high in the profes¬ 
sion. In 1835 he took up his residence in New r Orleans, married, 
and practiced law in company wi;h Slidell, Benjamin, and other 
leaders of the subsequent rebellion, they, how'ever, being a 
decade or two older than himself. While in New Orleans, and 
surrounded by slaveholding influences, his clear-seeing intellect 
and staunch puritanism took the opposite tack, and he became 
a convert to and a devotee of abolitionism. This conviction led 
him to remove to the young republic of Texas, in the hope to 
help mould its institutions adversely to the introduction of 
slavery. 

In Texas Mr. Andrews found that he was too late to do any¬ 
thing to stop the adoption of slavery as the civil polity of the 
new State. It had been already incorporated into the Constitu* 
tion of the Republic just adopted, and in mere pronounced and 
offensive terms than any State of the Union had ever ventured 
upon. Being, however, on the ground, he remained there, and 
went into the practice of his profession in the large land-suits 
which the anomalous state of things caused to abound, and 
became rapidly wealthy, especially in lands, while he persist¬ 
ently refused to engage in suits which involved slave property, 
or even to become a citizen, on the ground of the objectionable 
pro-slavery clause in the constitution. Two results followed. 
His impetuous and logical eloquence gained for him a wide 


868 


STEPHEN PEAKL ANDREWS. 


repute and the credit of standing at the head of the bar, and 
the public were proud of his ability; while, on the other hand, 
his seemingly reckless and fanatical opposition to their favorite 
institution aroused an opposition so in'ense that it would have 
driven almost any man out of the country; if, indeed, it had 
not cost him his life. His career furnishes the only instance 
during those ominous anti-abolition times where an avowed and 
active abolitionist maintained his footing in the midst of a 
Southern population; if we except, perhaps, the case of Cassius 
M. Clay, who had the two advantages of being southern born, 
and of a location near the northern border. 

Mr. Andrews remained four years in Texas, from 1839 to 
1843. Near the close of that period he resolved to make a more 
public and decided effort to overthrow the institution of slavery 
in that country; or failing in that to return North and find 
some new field for his energies. Circumstances affecting the 
state of public affairs favored his attempt, and for a time it 
seemed as if he was about to succeed; but when the hostile 
party became thoroughly aroused, the tide of victory turned, 
and his effort in Texas seemed to have utterly failed. *He w'as 
mobbed, and such a reign of terror instituted that his parti- 
zans were silenced. He was not, how r ever, driven out of the 
country. Public meetings resolved upon his protection, voted 
personal confidence in him, and urged him to remain. He 
had resolved, however, in case of failure to leave. He now 
added to that resolve the purpose of going to England, and 
endeavoring to enlist the British government in his scheme, 
succeeding in which he would return to Texas, armed with the 
money power and the protection of a powerful nation, to nego¬ 
tiate terms of remuneration for the slaves, to forbid the exten¬ 
sion of the institution and to open the young republic as the 
refuge for freedom. 

The British government approved the plan of Mr. Andrews, 
and manifested the strongest desire to enter into it; but w r as 
deterred by the fear of incurring the open hostility of the 
United States. The existence of the negotiations became known 
and was the direct cause of the steps taken by the Cabinet of 
Mr. Tyler, which resulted in the annexation of Texas. This 
led to the Mexican war, to the acquisition of the new territo- 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 


869 


ties, to the Kansas war and John Brown, and so to the war of 
the Rebellion, and the abolition of slavery. All these great, 
events followed in the wake of the Texas operations of Mr. 
Andrews in Texas and in Europe, as directly as any one polit¬ 
ical event can be traced as the consequence of another. 

His direct purpose having failed, Mr. Andrews returned in 
the fall of 1843 to Boston, Massachusetts, and devoted the next, 
six years to two objects. He allied himself with the Liberty 
Party branch of the Anti-Slavery Movement, and worked un¬ 
tiringly and with marked success in the building up of that 
party, which led to the formation of the Free Soil Party and 
afterwards to that of the Republican Party; and he introduced, 
in the meantime, Phonography and the Spelling Reform, and 
founded the present system of Phonographic Reporting. When 
Mr. Hoar was driven out of South Carolina, a great union 
meeting of the three parties took place, in the State House in 
Boston; for the expression of the indignation of the State of 
Massachusetts, and, for the moment, the Liberal Party stood 
foremost. Each party selected two orators, and sought to bring 
forward their ablest men. The Liberal Party selected James 
G. Burney, their candidate for the presidency, and Stephen 
Pearl Andrews. The place of honor, for the last speech, was 
assigned to Mr. Andrews, and his admirers claimed for his 
oratory rank with that of Wendell Phillips, who being a Garri¬ 
sonian, and so out of politics, did not appear on that occasion. 
At a recent anniversary of the American Law Reporters’ Asso¬ 
ciation (1874), Mr. Audrews was made the guest of the occasion, 
and was toasted as the pioneer and lather of the profession. 

Since 1847 Mr. Andrews has resided in the City of New York, 
except when business or his reformatory labors have taken him 
to other cities; usually, then, Washington and Boston. In and 
during the year 1874 he entered upon the novelty of delivering 
a course of Scientific Sermons on Sundays, and at the regular 
hours for ordinary church assemblages; and De Garmo Hall 
became somewhat renowned for this enterprise. The Church of 
Humanity at Science Hall is an indirect outgrowth of it, and 
seems to promise to render this feature of New York Liberal 
society permanent and ultimately pervasive. 

It remains to give a slightly more extended notice of Mr. 


S70 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 


Andrews’ scientific, philosophic and reformatory career. As a 
young man, in Louisiana, he believed that he had hit upon 
the germ of a great discovery; that of the unity of all science 
and philosophy; as well as of the practical life of the individual 
and of society; the discovery, in a word, of the unity of law in 
the Universe. He planned, also, at that day the reform of 
English orthography and other minor enterprises which he has 
since endeavored to realize. He came later to the study of the 
great thinkers of all schools, and he proposes no less than to 
found the ultimate reconciliation of them all; not by a super¬ 
ficial eclecticism, but by a radical adjustment of all the possible 
forms of thought, belief and idea. The same principles to 
which he looks for this immense result, furnish also, he informs 
us, tde basis and guidance for the construction of the Scientific 
Universal Language; the one language which is to replace the 
two or three thousand languages which now cover and cumber 
the earth. This Universal Science he denominates Universol- 
ogy, the elements of which are contained in a large work called 
“The Basic Outline of Universology.” The new language he 
calls Alwato (Ahl-wah-to); and his philosophy at large, as a 
doctrine of many-sidedness and reconciliation, is known as 
Integral ism. The Practical Instit ution of Life, what he advo¬ 
cates and is laboring to inaugurate, neither mere individualism 
nor mere communism, is called the Pantarcliy, and he as the 
founder and leader of it is spoken of as the Pantarch. 

Mr. Andrews is much misunderstood, and prejudices have 
been aroused upon two points especially. Out of the Sovereignty 
of the Individual, adopted by him from Mr. Warren, he devel¬ 
oped that broad doctrine of social freedom, and no less, as he 
understands it, a doctrine of social restraint, known as Free 
Love. Loose and inconsequential thinkers, both advocates and 
opponents see, in it, only the freedom side, and are apt to 
construe it into a doctrine of license; but he explains it as 
freedom for the oppressed slaves of the lustful possession of 
others whether in or out of marriage, and the consequent re¬ 
straint of all love manifestations which are not prompted by 
genuine love. The other point is in respect to the Pantarcliy. 
This, by admitting the doctrine of leadership, seems adverse to 
our American idea of democracy; but as expounded by Pan- 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 


871 


tarchians it is, that is to say, it claims to be, the Scientific 
Adjustment of Freedom and Order. 

At all events, it seems that the more the ideas of Mr. An¬ 
drews are studied, the more prejudice subsides; and it is per¬ 
ceived that instead of being in any sense, a mere destructive, 
he is a scientist struggling with the solution of questions of the 
highest import to the well-being of mankind. 

There is probably no living reformer about whom there is 
such a diversity of opinion and estimate as about Mr. Andrews. 
Even in the matter of literary style he is by some regarded as 
the most lucid and convincing of writers, and by others, as 
oppressed by more than all the obscurity of a Carlyle or a 
Swedenborg. The solution of this contradiction appears to be 
this. When he is treating of common subjects such as occupy 
the attention of other writers, his style is a model of clearness 
and strength. When on the other hand he is treating of sci¬ 
entific, among which he includes sociological questions, from 
the point of view of his discoveries and peculiar perception of 
principles, he finds it requisite to establish new technicalities 
and to adhere to them. His writings of this kind are for stu¬ 
dents, and not for merely casual readers. To the latter class 
they cannot but seem obscure; they are not so, however, 
through pedantry or affectation, but from what is held to be 
necessary technicality. 

Mr. Andrews has for many years been entirely emancipated 
from the superstitions and creeds of the Church. He may be 
classed among the most advanced thinkers of the age, and 
acknowledges no allegiance to mysticisms or errors, even 
though they are frosted with the lapse of centuries and have 
been enforced by the dictum of thousands of priests. His sys¬ 
tem, however, is one of tolerance and he prescribes no set of 
theological view's which a man shall adopt. He accepts the 
phenomena and philosophy of Spiritualism, having had ample 
opportunity of becoming fully convined of the truths connected 
therewith. 


872 


LEWIS MASQUERIEE 


LEWIS MASQUERIER. 

The subject of this sketch was born in Paris, Ky., March 14, 
1802. He is a descendant of the French Huguenots on the 
paternal side and of the Scotch-Irish Nonconformists on the 
maternal side. From a few months’ education in a log school- 
house in the woods he educated himself in various branches 
of literature and science. 

Learning the art of printing it led him to see the imperfec¬ 
tion of the alphabet and the barbarous orthography of the 
English language. He has developed to liis full satisfaction 
that there are eleven vowel sounds in the human voice and 
that they are modified into species by twenty-two conso¬ 
nants or sinkings of the parts of the mouth upon each other. 
He has in keeping wiih this theory compiled an alphabet of 
easy adoption, of the best of the Roman small capitals,and 
small letters, differing only in size. With each of these let¬ 
ters, invariably representing a single element of the voice, he 
has provided for easily spelling the words in all languages, thus 
tending towards the building up of a universal language. There 
is an increasing interest manifested in this orthographic reform ; 
ingenious systems and alphabets in great variety have been 
brought out. There can be little doubt that at a not far dis¬ 
tant day the English-speaking inhabitants of the world will 
take a forward step in this matter of orthography. It is a most 
necessary step. They will be compelled to do this if they wish 
the English language to become the general language of the 
world. The tendency is doubtless to a homogeneity of language 
habits, education and belief. Our language assuredly needs to 
be reformed before it is suited to be thus generally adopted. 

Mr. Masquerier was one of the number who joined George H. 
Evans in the Land Reform movement, which contended for the 
natural right of every human being to a share of the earth’s 
soil for life, the same as the water and the air which surrounds 
the globe, giving the power of self-employment; and by organ- 


LEWIS MASQUERIER. 


873 


izing into township landed democracies throughout the nation, 
such convenient communities and governments as would best 
subserve the greatest good to the entire population, and afford 
them the best and truest system of self government. 

He believes he has developed the thorough principles of a 
perfect right to be those of equality , inalienation , and individu¬ 
ality, while their respective opposites or wrongs are the leading 
causes of evil. He has given an improved classification of Rights 
and Wrongs running parallel; and applied these great princi¬ 
ples to them all; thus giving them a more scientific form. His 
publications consist of “A Phonotypic Spelling, and Reading 
Manual;’* “A Phonotypic Dictionary;” “A History of the 
Land Reform Movement; *’ “Sociology, or the Science of Soci¬ 
ety;” “A Classification and Analogy of the Elements of the 
Medium of the Five Senses,” etc. 

Mr. Masquerier has been a confirmed Freethinker for many 
years, believing in the boundlessness and eternality of the Uni¬ 
verse, which, by necessity, could never have had a maker nor 
designer. It is long since he had the slightest confidence in 
the mysticisms of darker ages, or in the dwarfing rule of the¬ 
ology and priestcraft. He believes in the immutable laws of 
Na'ure; that they are equal to all emergencies, and that the 
Universe requires no personal God to attend to its operations, 
and no privileged, salaried priesthood to govern, guide, and 
grind down the human race. He has written numerous essays 
upon theological and reformatory subjects, which, from time to 
time, have appeared in the Liberal and secular press. 

In the year 1872 he lost his amiable and intellectual wife, 
who was a Tabor previous to her marriage. She was highly 
esteemed for her many good qualities by all who knew her. 
She was also an advanced thinker, and had long been emanci¬ 
pated from the tyranny of dogmas and creeds. 

He has a monument of granite prepared for his tomb in 
Cypress Hill Cemetery, adjoining Brooklyn, upon which are 
engraved the principles of Land Reform which he has advo¬ 
cated for many years, as well as his alphabetical and ortho¬ 
graphic reform, thus transmitting to stone his cherished princi¬ 
ples which must thus be preserved, hundreds and perhaps +’■ 
sands of years. 


874 


BISMA11CK. 


BISMARCK. 


Karl Otto Bismarck, Prince and Prime Minister of Prussia, 
is conceded to be the ablest statesman of modern times. He is 
the great representative of Free.hought and Progress in the 
Old World to-day. 

Born at Brandenburg, April 1, 1813; educated at Gottingen, 
Berlin, and Greifswalde; entered the Prussian army, and became 
a lieutenant in the Landwehr — this is the epitome of his early 
career. He was wild and reckless in his youth, and his college 
days were noted for many deeds of daring. 

In 1816 he became a member of the Diet of the province of 
Saxony, and in 1847 of the United Diet. In these he made him¬ 
self remarkable by the ability and boldness of his speeches. 
Upon one occasion he argued that all great cities should be 
swept from the face of the earth, because they were the centers 
of democracy and constitutionalism. 

He became famous as one of the chief orators of the conser¬ 
vative party. He even went so far as to censure and den unce 
the king for affiliating with the national party and following 
the tri-colored flag. When the German Parliament, assembled 
at Frankfort, sent a deputation to Berlin with the offer of the 
imperial dignity to Frederick William IV., Bismarck strongly 
opposed the movement, because it recognized the sovereignty of 
the people. He declared that democratic, representative ideas, 
and the principles upon which the Prussian monarchy rests, 
were mutually exclusive, and could never be made to amal¬ 
gamate. 

The great sole aim of Bismarck’s life since entering upon 
his public career has been the aggrandizement and prosperity 
of Prussia. In 1851 he entered the diplomatic service, and was 
entrusted with the legation at Frankfort. He adopted as his 
political axiom, that Prussia could not fulfill its mission in Ger¬ 
many until Austria should be humiliated. In 1852 he was sent 
to Vienna, where he proved a constant adversary to the Aus- 


BISMARCK. 


875 


trian Premier. In 1838 a pamphlet appeared which created a 
great sensation throughout Europe, the authorship of which 
was generally attributed to him. 

In March, 1859, ho was sent as ambassador to St. Petersburg, 
which position he held until 1862. "While there he was decor¬ 
ated with the order of St. Alexander Newski by the Czar. In 
May 1862 he was appointed ambassador to Paris, where he 
received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor from Napo¬ 
leon III; and in September of the same year he was made 
Minister of the King’s House of Foreign Affairs. 

In 1864, after the close of the aggressive war against Den¬ 
mark, in which Austria had reluctantly taken part, Bismarck 
thought that the time had arrived for carrying out his long 
cherished project of making Prussia the head of the German 
Confederation. His preparath ns for another aggressive war were 
soon completed, and in June, 1866, he declared war against 
Austria. Aided by an alliance with Italy, he completed the con¬ 
quest of Austria in a campaign of a few week’s duration. The 
Prussian armies speedily occupied Hanover and Saxony. Advanc¬ 
ing into Bohemia, they encountered the Austrian army near 
Sadowa, and gained a victory so decisive that the Austrian 
emperor made overtures of peace; and in August 1866 a treaty 
was signed by which Austria was excluded from the German 
Bund. Hanover, Hesse, Holstein, and other small states were 
annexed to Prussia. In August of the same year he negotiated 
secret treaties of offensive and defensive alliance with Bavaria, 
Baden, and Wurtemburg. These treaties were first made public 
in April 1867, and according to them the King of Prussia was 
made the commander of the armies of those States. This war 
and the negotiations of Bismarck resulted in the union of Ger¬ 
many, and rendered Prussia the foremost power in Europe. 

In the diplomatic intrigues and contests of 1868 the great 
Prussian diplomatist completely outwitted Napoleon III. and 
proved himself the master statesman of modern times. M. 
Thiers, in 18C7, thus wrote of him: “In considering recent 
events, I am tempted to exclaim, with Bossuet, ‘A man wag 
found.’ Not that I wish to institute any comparison between 
Cromwell, to whom the quotation applies, and the bold minis¬ 
ter who has so rapidly raised Prussia to greatness. But con- 


876 


BISIJAItCK. 


sideling how wonderfully adapted lie has shown himself to the 
task he has undertaken, 1 cannot help saying, yes, a man has 
been found endowed with rare political sagacity, still greater 
boldness, and whom his countrymen must consider a great 
patriot.” 

In 1867 he was appointed Chancellor of the North German 
Confederation. The world knows how in 1870 he accepted the 
challenge rashly offered by the Emperor of France, and con¬ 
ducted Germany through a successful war, that resulted in mak¬ 
ing his sovereign Emperor of Germany. At the termination of 
the war he was created a Prince of the Empire. 

In person Bismarck is tall and athletic, with an honest and 
expressive countenance, and a high, broad, and full forehead, in 
which benevolence and intellectuality are unmistakably blended. 
His manners are easy, frank, and unaffected. lie is thoroughly 
aristocratic in all his thoughts, tastes, and sympathies. He 
has large estates in Mecklenburg, and is noted for his kindness 
to his tenantry. 

In later years Bismarck’s efforts have been directed to res¬ 
cuing Germany from the dangerous domination of the papal 
power. Like Pombal of Spain and Pope Clement XIY. he has 
dissolved the order of Jesuits, and the whole Catholic world 
has resounded with outcries and maledictions against the Prus¬ 
sian Prince. He has succeeded in secularizing the schools and 
in establishing the supremacy of the State over the Church. By 
his bold policy he has crushed the infamous Jesuits, which, like 
snakes in the grass, menaced the national existence of Ger¬ 
many and the peace of the world. A decided skeptic, his policy 
is to eventually root out superstition of every name. It is 
affirmed of him that he has repeatedly declared in private that 
he was determined to do his best to out-root both Pope and 
God from the hearts of Germans, and that their only Deity 
should be the State. A powerful and practical man, the great¬ 
est statesman and political Infidel of the age, Prince Bismarck 
is destined to be the European colossus that shall crush the 
power of the papacy and redeem the Old World from the sacer¬ 
dotal slavery of centuries. 


BISHOP COLENSO. 


877 


COLENSO. 

It does appear like a miserable attempt at grim humor to 
include a Bishop of the Church of England in our list of Infi¬ 
dels. But it cannot be helped. Bishop Colenso is an Infidel of 
the rarest type, as are many other Anglican dignitaries of at 
least the Broad Wing of the Establishment. Indeed, what with 
the strong free-thinking leaven that is working within the 
Church of England —virtually the most Liberal Church in the 
world — and the stronger leaven of outspoken Freetliought 
working in the Civilized World at large, we are sometimes fain 
to believe that the Infidel Millennium is near at hand. How¬ 
ever that may be, we shall “ learn to labor and to wait,” well 
assured that in due time it will rise as a sun, with healing in 
its wings. Are we not now in the midst of the dewy dawn of 
the better day, and are not yonder rays direct emanations from 
the luminous crown of the very Sun of Bigliteousness itself? 

John William Colenso was born in 1814, and graduated at 
the University of Cambridge, England, in 183G. He then became 
mathematical teacher at Harrow School, and a country rector 
in Norfolkshire. In 18~4 he became Bishop of Natal, South 
Africa. While there engaged in the translation of the Scriptures 
into the Zulu tongue, with the aid of intelligent natives, he 
was brought face to face with questions which in former days 
had caused him some uneasiness, but with respect to which he 
had been enabled to satisfy his mind sufficiently for practical 
purposes, as a Christian minister, by means of the specious 
explanations given in most commentaries on the Bible, and had 
settled down into a willing acquiescence in the general truth of 
the narrative of the Old Testament. But while translating the 
story of the Deluge, a simple-minded but intelligent Zulu — 
now worthily proverbial—with the docility of a child but the 
reasoning powers of maturer age, looked up and asked: “Is all 
that true? Do you really believe that all the beasts, birds, 
and creeping things, from hot countries and cold, came thus 


873 


BISHOP COLENSO. 


by pairs and entered Noah’s Ark? And did Noah gather food 
for them all; for the beasts and birds of prey as well as the 
rest?” The Bishop had recently acquired sufficient knowledge 
of geology to know that a universal deluge, such as is described 
in Genesis, could not have taken place. So his heart answered 
in the words of the “prophet,” “Shall a man speak lies in the 
name of the Lord ? ” He dared not do so, but gave the brother 
such a reply as satisfied him for the time, without throwing 
any discredit upon the general veracity of the Bible history. 
But being driven to search more deeply into these questions, 
the Bishop wrote to a friend in England to send him the be.-t 
books on both sides of the question of the creditability of 
Mosaic history. His friend sent him the works of Ewald and 
Kurtz. Laying Ewald, for this time, on the shelf, lie studied 
Kurtz, who maintained with great zeal an 1 ability the historical 
accura y of the Pentateuch. He then grappled with Ewald, 
who maintained an opposite view. The result of the Bishop’s 
study, with the aid of a few other German books, appeared in 
the first volume of his work, issued in 18G2, followed soon after 
by four more volumes. The books met with a very large sale. 
Their main argument tends to prove that the Pentateuch is not 
historically true, and that it was composed by several writers, 
the earliest of whom lived in the time of Samuel, from 1000 to 
1060 B. C., and the latest in the time of Jeremiah, from 641 to 
624 B. C. 

Bishop Colenso’s “Pentateuch” was condemned by both 
houses of convocation of the province of Canterbury in 1864. 
This was a matter of course. Indeed, many saintly critics had 
discovered the taint of heresy in Colenso as far back as 1853, 
in his “Tillage Sermons,” dedicated to the celebrated Mr. 
Maurice, who was shortly afterwards expelled from his theolog¬ 
ical professorship at King’s College, on the ground of his heret¬ 
ical opinions about eternal damnation. The Bishop’s subsequent 
“Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans ” also made him 
the victim of holy persecution, which culminated after the 
appearance of his “Pentateuch.” But he still holds “the even 
tenor of his way,” a terror to “High and Low Church,” a pillar 
of the “Broad Church,” and a very saint in the calendar of 
Ereethought. 


J. B. BUCHANAN. 


879 


J. R. BUCHANAN. 

Joseph Rodes Buchanan was born at Frankfort, Kentucky, 
December 11,1814. His father, Dr. Joseph Buchanan, was a pro¬ 
found original thinker, learned in medicine, law, and mechani¬ 
cal science. The subject of this sketch displayed at a very 
ear’y age unusual mental capacity and a paramount taste for 
grave studies. The development of his mind was somewhat pre¬ 
cocious, and before he was twelve years old he was familiar 
with the doctrines of political economy, mental philosophy, and 
the principles of government. His father selected the legal 
profession for his son; but, though at the age of thirteen he 
had mastered Blackstone’s Commentaries, he developed no 
special taste for the profession. At the age of fourteen he lost 
his father, and was of necessity thrown on his own resources 
as a practical printer. Before attaining his majority he studied 
medicine at Transylvania University, and became profoundly 
interested in the structure and functions of the brain. In his 
twenty-first year he became a public lecturer on that subject, 
and devoted himself to perfecting the discoveries of Gall, which 
he found incomplete and inaccurate. 

In 1841 he is said to have discovered the art of so exciting 
the several organs of the brain as to produce their appropriate 
functional operations. By his careful experiments and critical 
observations he placed phrenology on a more positive and 
scientific basis, and so enforced its claims as to command 
respect among philosophers and scholars. 

In December, 1841, he became united in marriage with Miss 
Anne Rowan, the accomplished and intellectual daughter of 
Judge Rowan, and in seventeen months after his connection 
with this distinguished family his father-in-law was removed by 
death. 

In 1842 Dr. Buchanan introduced his discoveries to the New 
York public, and at once attracted some of the best minds of 
the city. Robert Dale Owen who had listened to his expositions 


880 


J. R. BUCHANAN, 


and witnessed his experiments, which he described in a letter 
to the “Evening Post,” expressed the conviciion that when the 
subject had undergone a general investigation, and the discov¬ 
eries of Prof. P. had been verified by others, the name of Dr. 
Buchanan would stand “hardly second to that of any philoso¬ 
pher or philanthropist who ever devoted his life to the cause of 
science and the benefit of the human race.” 

Dr. Buchanan spent six months in Boston and demonstrated 
the principles of the new science to the satisfaction of large 
classes and learned committees, showing that his discoveries had 
completed the entire science of man, connecting all its parts in 
a systematic whole, which was justly entitled to the name of 
“ Anthropology.” 

Prof. Caldwell, the virtual founder of the old University 
Medical School of Louisville, whose boldness and independence 
of thought were so well known, spoke of Dr. Buchanan, in 
1842, as one who had revolutionized the science of the brain, 
and whose name would be remembered when most of his dis¬ 
tinguished medi al contemporaries were lost in oblivion. 

After five years spent in the investigation and propagation of 
the new anthropology Dr. Buchanan accepted the professor’s 
chair of “Physiology and the Institutes of Medicine” in the 
Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati, which he occupied for 
ten years, during a considerable portion of which time he was 
dean of the faculty. His peculiar discoveries and new views of 
physiology constituted an attractive feature of the school, and 
were spoken of in terms of enthusiasm by the medical classes 
and his colleagues of the faculty as the most important discov¬ 
eries ever made in medical science. The school rapidly grew 
to a success equal to that of Transylvania in its best days, and 
greatly surpassed its older rivals in the city, while Dr. Buchanan 
occupied his chair. 

In addition to the duties of his professorship Dr. Buchanan 
edited a medical magazine and published for five years “ Buchan¬ 
an's Journal of Man,” chiefly of original matter, devoted to the 
new anthropology. He also published an edition of two thou¬ 
sand copies of his “System of Anthropology,” which was rapidly 
sold. This, however, was but a brief synopsis of four hundred 
pages. The full development of the system which unfolds the 


t 


J. R. BUCHANAN. 881 

laws of mind and explains its operations through the brain and 
body will require at least ten volumes, and Dr. Buchanan has 
since engaged in their preparation. Their scope embraces a 
review of all the great systems and fragments of philosophy of 
the present and past centuries; a precise view of “Mental 
Philosophy,” embracing not only the functions of the brain, 
but the categorical or a priori demonstration of the faculties; 
a complete system of “ Cerebral Physiology,” supplying the 
great hiatus in systems of physiology (which almost ignore the 
brain) and laying the foundations of a complete philosophy of 
therapeutics; a system of “Sarcognomy,” explaining the devel¬ 
opment of the body and its relations to the soul; a system of 
“Pathognomy,” giving the laws of expression and oratory, 
with the mathematical basis of all relations between mind and 
matter; a system of “Physiognomy,” not based on empirical 
observation, but on laws of mathematical certainty. All the 
fundamental laws of the line arts and aesthetics are comprised 
in the systems of “Pathognomy” and “Sarcognomy.” A vol¬ 
ume will be devoted to “Psychometry,” another to “Insanity,” 
and another to “ Psychology.” These subjects, from their vast 
extent, have never been fully developed in his lectures. 

In 1857 Dr. Buchanan returned to Louisville. During the 
political convulsions of the next decade Dr. Buchanan became 
interested in politics to oppose secession, to assert the liberty 
of the press, and to resist the despotic action of the military 
authorities, with whom he came in collision and was impris¬ 
oned several weeks without any charge. He was equally 
opposed to secession and to war, and used his influence in 
favor of pacific measures. From 1863 to 1866 he acted as chair¬ 
man of the Democratic State Central Committee, and it was 
mainly by his action in calling a State Convention in 1864, and 
again in May, 1866, contrary to the wishes of the leading poli¬ 
ticians, that the Democratic Party in Kentucky was reorganized. 
In this he pursued a conciliatory, unpartisan course to unite 
all good citizens in the restoration of order and political har¬ 
mony, and his services were so highly appreciated that his 
friends urged his nomination as a candidate for the governor¬ 
ship of the state; but he declined to be brought forward, feel¬ 
ing that his proper vocation was not in politics. 


882 


J. R. BUCHANAN. 


\ 


Dr. Buchanan has recently held positions in other medical 
schools, but is at present exclusively devoted to authorship. 
Advanced thinkers are looking with great interest for his future 
publications, for Dr. Buchanan is not alone in entertaining the 
idea that the acceptance of his anthropological discoveries 
would realize whatever is best in the philosophic conceptions of 
Aristotle, Plato, Gall, Spurzheim, Fourier, Swedenborg, Locke, 
Carpenter, Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and others, each of whom 
in his own line and manner has brought into special promi¬ 
nence some phase or phases of that comprehensive but chiefly 
original philosophy contained in the author's new system. 
That it will establish a new era in philosophy and physiologi¬ 
cal science is the belief of those who are most familiar with 
the subject. 

Dr. Buchanan has recently taken the direction of the Coop¬ 
erative Journal, published in Louisville in connection with the 
Kochdale cooperatives of England. It is conducted with marked 
ability and is destined to attract much attention to this grow¬ 
ing question. The professor is President of the American 
Cooperative Union, which is designed to establish Rochdale 
Cooperation and unite all Cooperative societies in this country. 

Prof. Buchanan is emphatically an advanced thinker and is 
found in radical opposition to mistaken theories and practices 
of older times. For instance he took a decided stand, years 
ago, against the use of the lancet and he had not to wait many 
years before he attended the funeral services of that instru¬ 
ment. 

His theories, his propositions, and his philosophy are in 
striking contrast with the formerly accepted theories of the 
world and he looks not for adequate recognition from scien¬ 
tific and philosophical mind until a decade or two more have 
given time for examination and reflection. It is believed his 
forthcoming volumes will contribute largely to the departments 
of science upon which they treat, and that they are destined to 
cause a revolution in many of the theories hitherto maintained. 
Several recent lectures which the Professor has delivered on 
•‘The Evolution ot. Genius,” “Free Democracy,” and “Home 
and School,” have direct connection with the work of his life. 


ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 


883 


ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 

This lady ranks among the most prominent women of the 
present generation. She was the daughter of Judge Daniel 
Cady of Johnstown, N. Y., where she was born November 12, 
1816. 

At fin early age she entered the academy, where she took up 
the study of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, in a class com¬ 
posed of boys. In this class she carried the prize in Greek. At 
the age of fifteen she graduated from the Johnstown Academy 
at the head of her class. She was proficient in all her studies, 
and no other scholar had been oftener at the head of her classes. 

She was next placed in Mrs. Willard’s Female Seminary in 
Troy. She spent two years there, which she terms “the drear¬ 
iest years of my whole life.” The next seven years were passed 
at home, during which she conquered the books in her father’s 
library, and the horses in her father’s stable. She delighted in 
horise-taming; and often, after riding half the day over the 
Fulton hi'lls, like a fox-hunter, she would study law books half 
the night, like a jurist. 

In 1839, in her twenty-fourth year, she made a visit to the 
distinguished philanthropist and reformer, Gerrit Smith, who 
was her cousin. At his house in Peterboro, she made the ac¬ 
quaintance of Henry B. S*tanton, then a young and fervid 
orator who had already won distinction in the anti-slavery 
moveiSmt. They soon became lovers, married, and set sail for 
Europe; the object of the voyage being that Mr. Stanton might 
fulfil the mission of a delegate to the “World’s Anti-Slavery 
Convention,” to be held in London, 1840. 

Upon his return to America he began the practice of law in 
Boston, where he and his wife resided for five years. They 
afterwards removed to Seneca Falls, N. Y. There, on July 19- 
20, 1818, was held the first “Wonsan's Rights Convention” 
known in history. The chief agent in calling the convention 
was Mrs. Stanton. She drafted its resolutions and declarations 


884 


ELIZABETH CADY ST AN TON. 


of sentiment. She agitated, for the first time on that occasion, 
the subject of woman’s suffrage. She there made her first pub¬ 
lic speech. Her best friends were struck with consternation by 
her bold conduct and views. Judge Cady fancied liis daughter 
crazy, and journeyed from Johnstown to Seneca Falls to learn 
the facts. He spent a whole night trying to reason her out of 
her position; but ineffectually, for the world knows that since 
the day of the Seneca Fall’s Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
has been one of the representative women of America. 

In the summer of 1867 she took an active part in the mem¬ 
orable campaign in Kansas, in which was decided the question 
of adopting a new Constitution. With Senator Pomeroy and 
other famous speakers she addressed the people at all the 
prominent places in the State. After the K nsas election she 
returned eastward, stopping at all the chief cities on her way 
and speaking at public meetings on woman’s rights. In the 
beginning of 1868, she, in connection with Parker Pillsbury and 
Susan B. Anthony, started in New York “The Revolution,” a 
weekly journal devoted to reform. This sheet spread abroad 
some of the noblest thoughts and utterances of the day —ring¬ 
ing words for liberty, justice, and womanhood — eloquent appeals 
for more liberal laws and an improved condition of society. It 
has since been discontinued. 

The life of Mrs. Stanton has been given to the cause of 
Woman’s rights and elevation. That cause has been her 
religion. Those acquainted with her know that she would 
sacrifice her life for the enfranchisement of her sex. As a par¬ 
liamentarian and debater she is unequaled among women. She 
was never argued down in her life. As a conversationalist, she 
is Madame de Stael alive again. She is the proud mother of 
five sons and two daughters, and is queen over one of the 
happiest households in the land. Hers is the central position 
among the eminent women of America to-day. Years ago she 
cast off the superstitions of her youth; and like all the true 
and noble women whose hearts have glowed with a sacred love 
of liberty and justice and humanity, she is a true Liberal in 
every sense of the term. 


GEORGE H. LEWES. 


885 


GEORGE H. LEWES. 

Among the eminent and exceptional men of this age is Mr. 
Lewes — the biographical philosopher. He has established an 
unsought claim to public regard, not only as a historian and 
philosopher, but as a man of science, a thinker, a critic, and a 
commentator on men and affairs. He has, perhaps, done more 
to disentangle the metaphysical systems of the olden schools 
from their senseless subtleties, and to classify and assign them 
their proper places in the evolution of thought, than any other 
living man. A thorough scholar and a rationalist, he is to be 
reckoned chief among the few expositors of that refined and 
cultured Infidelity which is becoming rapidly diffused through¬ 
out the literary world; and it is to be regretted that a fuller 
and more complete biography of him cannot be given in these 
already crowded pages. 

He was born in London, April 18, 1817. He received his 
early education in private schools at Greenwich and other 
places. He passed a portion of his youth in the office of a 
Russian (merchant, which, however, he left in order to devote 
himself to the study of medicine. After making considerable 
progress in his medical studies, and acquiring a knowledge 
which has been of great advantage to him in later researches 
and publications, he abandoned the idea of becoming a physi¬ 
cian, and gave himself wholly to the pursuit of literature. He 
passed 1838 and 1839 in Germany for the purpose of acquaint¬ 
ing himself with the language, life, and literature of that land. 
In addition to his school-acquired knowledge of Greek and 
Latin, he had already become acquainted with French, Italian, 
and Spanish. This unusual knowledge of modern languages 
was of vast service to the young man at the commencement of 
his career as a man of letters. 

Returning from Germany to London, he has resided there 
more or less regularly since. He has been an indefatigable 
worker with his pen. Among the Quarterly Reviews for which 


I 


886 GEORGE H. LEWES. 

he has been contributor, are the “Edinburgh,” “Westminster,” 
“British and Foreign,” “Foreign Quarterly,” and “British 
Quarterly.” Among the Magazines, are “Fraser’s,” “Black¬ 
wood’s,” and the “Cornhill.” In addition to these he has 
written much for the “Classical Museum,” and the “Atlas” 
and “Morning Chronicle” newspapers. He occupied the edi¬ 
torial chair of the “ Leader ” from 1849 to 1854. This was a 
high-class weekly journal devoted to the dissemination of cul¬ 
tured Freethought among the educated classes. He was also 
largely a contributor to the “Penny Cyclopaedia.” In 1865 he 
became for a short time, the chief editor of the “ Fortnightly 
Beview.” His first work which made him known to fame under 
his own proper name, was “The Biographical History of Phi¬ 
losophy,” which appeared in 1845. This w T as soon followed by 
“The Spanish Drama: Lope de Yega and Calderon.” In 1847 he 
published a novel, entitled “Kanthorpe.” This was succeeded 
in the following year by “Bose, Blanche, and Violet.” His 
“Life of Maximilien Bobespierre ” Avas published in 1849. In 
1863, one of the volumes in Bohn’s Scientific Series was “Comte’s 
Philosophy of the Sciences,” by Mr. Lev r es. 

As a dramatic author he has also acquired considerable pop¬ 
ularity. Among these dramatic performances “The Game of 
Speculation,” and the “Noble Heart ” are the best known. His 
later publications are his “ Physiology of Common Life,” “Sea- 
Side Studies,” “Studies in Animal Life,” “Life and Works of 
Goethe.” His last great work, the crowning work of his bril¬ 
liant literary and philosophical career, is “ Problems of Life 
and Mind.” This w T as commenced as far back as 1836. In this 
work he shirks nothing that can be rationally stated, and which, 
therefore, must be rationally soluble —he stands by the work 
of his life — the destruction of the metaphysical method and 
the triumph of inductive science. He holds all knowledge to 
be merely relative, and aims at making the “ Philosophy of 
Science” the “Foundation of a Creed.” 

In later years Mr. Lewes has become best known as a man 
of science. Seldom has an author attained greater eminence, 
either in the field of literature or science. His are rare works 
of ability and utility, displaying unremitting industry and 
extraordinary versatility. His style is clear, vigorous, and 


GEORGE H. LEWES. 


887 


pleasing, and the classification of his subjects is perfect. His 
scientific works are characterized, not only by the luminous- 
ness of their expositions, but by their bold, and often start¬ 
ling, generalizations. He has been the great popularizer of the 
Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte in England. Though his 
writings are not explicitly Infidel, yet inferentially, they have 
exercised quite as damaging an influence upon supernaturalism 
as those of any modern author. 

In his “Biographical History of Philosophy,” he proves, in 
his masterly manner, that all so-called supernaturalism has 
been untrue to man; that his mind cannot even grasp, much 
less believe, anything beyond the scope of his senses. This, 
logically, amounts to Atheism, But as the inference, which is 
obvious enough, is left to the mind of the reader, and not 
openly stated by the author, it comes with all the gentle force 
and pleasing self-flattery of spontaneous discovery; and if he 
have religious prejudices or sentiments, he is not startled by 
the announcement of the logical result ere his mind is prepared 
for its reception. 

Lewes condemned all metaphysical speculations, believing 
that certainty could be attained by no other method than that 
of the verification of the senses. This method he held to be 
the grand characteristic which distinguishes Science from Phi¬ 
losophy. He demands certainty upon every subject of human 
inquiry —fact instead of speculation. He is the only one disbe¬ 
lieving in the possibility of metaphysical certitude, who has 
attempted to write a history of Philosophy. As a true teacher 
of science, he is an enemy of theology and supernaturalism; 
for light is not more absolutely the antithesis of darkness, or 
truth the opposite of falsehood, than science is of every relig¬ 
ion that was ever begotten by priestcraft and born of credulity. 


888 


GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 


GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 

This eminent English Freethinker and Reformer was born in 
Birmingham in 1817. He descended from a family of old armor¬ 
ers in that town, who formerly held property on the River Rea 
and at Sellyoak, but none of it was possessed in the household 
in which the subject of this memoir was born. His father only 
inherited the skill of the forge by which his ancestors had been 
distinguished, and Mr. G. J. Holyoake is accustomed to say he 
was born with steel and books in his blood. When still very 
young, Mr. Holyoake got employment, when his school hours 
were over, at a tin-plate worker’s, he having taken a fancy to 
making lanterns. 

From the age of twelve to twenty-two he worked at the Eagle 
foundry, Birmingham, where his father held a situation as 
foreman of whitesmiths for forty years. 

Mr. Holyoake’s mother, a woman of remarkable piety, sent 
him to Carr’s-lane Sunday-school for several years, and he sub¬ 
sequently became a Sunday-school teacher in a Baptist society 
which liis mother sometimes frequented. He subsequently 
taught what h« knew of mathematics and rhetoric in the new 
meeting-house Unitarian schools, Birmingham, in days when 
Unitarians mercifully permitted useful information to be taught 
to working youths on Sundays. At the Mechanics’ Institution, 
Mr. Holyoake was invited by his early friend, Mr. Daniel 
Baker, and J. S. Murphy, the metaphysical essayist, still of 
Birmingham, and his class-mate, Dr. Hollick, now of America, 
to go and hear Robert Owen lecture on one of his visits to that 
town in 1837, which led to Mr. Holyoake being associated with 
the cooperators, who had a place of meeting in Allison Street, 
and afterwards in Laurence Street Chapel. On the death of 
Mr. Wright, whioh took p’ace suddenly at the Shakspere 
Rooms, Mr. Holyoake, for a time, conducted the classes at the 
Mechanics’ Institution. In 1840 he was appointed one of the 
Social Missionaries, as the public lecturers on cooperation were 
called. 


GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, 


839 


It was lecturing to the Chartists in their rooms in Chelten¬ 
ham ‘‘On Home Colonization,” in 1841, that led to his impris¬ 
onment in Gloucester gaol. A question was put to him as to 
his theological opinions: his rule was never to introduce them 
into his lectures and other subjects, and it was bee '.use he had 
not introduced them that the question was put to him. Usually 
Mr. Holyoake refused to answer such questions, as being irrel¬ 
evant and impertinent, but at that time a case had occurred in 
the town which led the public to believe that social advocates 
were timorous of avowing their opinions. Resolved that this 
should not be said of him, Mr. Holyoake answered the question 
directly and explicitly, and was ultimately tried at the Glouces¬ 
ter Assizes for the answer he gave. Mr. Jus'ice Erskine, who 
tried him, admitted it was an honest answer, and gave him six 
months’ imprisonment as an encouragement to youthful candor. 
Mr. Holyoake spoke nine hours and fifteen minutes in his own 
defense. 

For some years Mr. Holyoake was stationed as a cooperative 
lecturer in Worcester, Sheffield, and Glasgow, speaking at other 
times in most parts of Great Bri'ain. Observing and condemn¬ 
ing the confusion which arose, in the early social movements, 
from theology being mixed up with it, he devised a system of 
secular principles equally apart from Atheism and Theism, 
maintaining that wherever a moral end was sought thete was 
a secular as well as a religious part to it. 

On the cessation of the “New Moral World,” which for 
twelve years represented the cooperative movement, Mr. Hol¬ 
yoake commenced the “Reasoner,” in which he continued the 
advocacy of cooperation during thirty volumes. Being one of 
those who, in 1842 and 1843, visited Rochdale as a lecturer, he 
encouraged the recommencement of ccOperation in that town, 
and wrote many years later the history of the famous store 
which began there in 1844, a history which has been translated 
into German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and circulated or re¬ 
printed both in India, America, and Australia. Mr. Holyoake 
never stipulated or received any advantage from the copyrights 
of his works, his ideas being to advance the objects they repre¬ 
sented. He afterwards edited, with Mr. E. O. Greening, the 
“Social Economist,” which subsequently became the “Agricul- 


890 


GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 


tural Economist,” an important and successful journal still 
published in London. 

At many of the meetings of the Association for Promoting 
Social Science, Mr. Holyoake has read papers illustrative of co¬ 
operative principles and progress. He has edited several of the 
reports of the annual congresses, contributed to the “Cooperative 
News,” besides publishing numerous small pamphlets, as new 
methods of cooperative development seemed to require discus¬ 
sion. He published also a “History of Cooperation ” in Halifax, 
dedicated to his late friend Horace Greeley. 

Owing to the intrepidity of the eminent writers who con¬ 
ducted the “Leader” newspaper, Mr. Holyoake was associated 
with that enterprise from the beginning to the end of it. For 
several years Mr. Holyoake conducted and organized a publish¬ 
ing house in Fleet Street, from which issued every kind of pub¬ 
lication of fair intent and dispassionately written. In this 
house the committee met which opposed the Conspiracy Bill of 
Lord Palmerston, and led to the overthrow of that Minister. 
Mr. Holyoake was secretary of the committee. He was af er- 
wards acting secretary of the British Legion sent out to Gari¬ 
baldi. The committee of organization met at Mr. Holyoake’s 
house. In those days Mazzini and Professor Newman contrib¬ 
uted to the “Reasoner,” edited by Mr. Holyoake, in testimony 
Of the unimputative fearlessness which marked the advocacy 
he conducted. 

When no one else could be found to publish the special un¬ 
stamped newspapers during the final agitation for repealing the 
taxes on knowledge, Mr. Holyoake undertook to do so, under 
the direction of Mr. C. D. Collet, the masterly secretary of that 
movement. The publication of the “War Chronicles,” devised 
during the Crimean war, involved Mr. Holyoake in fines of 
more than £ 600 , 000 , which, when called upon in the Court of 
Exchequer to pay, he was under the necessity of asking the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer to take it weekly, not having that 
amount by him. The last warrant issued before the repeal of 
the Acts was against Mr. Holyoake. In this matter, as all 
others in which he was concerned, Mr. Holyoake followed the 
rule of never putting himself forward to do the thing in hand, 
but if no one else would do it, and it ought to be done, he did it. 


GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 


891 


Mr. Holyoake’s opinions have several times been quoted in 
Parliamentary debates. Under the encouragement of the late 
Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Holyoake became a candidate for the 
Tower Hamlets, in 1854, but ultimately resigned in favor of Mr. 
Ayrton. 

Several public discussions on Liberalism and Reform have 
been held by Mr. Holyoake, in which he uniformly acquitted 
himself in the most creditable manner. 

He has written numerous pamphlets on secularism and gen¬ 
eral reform. He is a clear, logical writer; he is not afrai 1 to 
utter his honest sentiments, and always does it in a candid, 
unobjectionable manner. He can in truth be said to be a lead¬ 
ing mind in the Freethought field of the day. 

He has been engaged nearly five years in writing the history 
of cooperation in England. The curious out-of-the-way facts 
belonging to the pioneer period from 1812 to 1844 are quite 
unknown to this generation. The first volume is already out 
and republished in this country; the second will soon follow. 
It meets with the highest commendation. At the present writ¬ 
ing, “The Secular Review,” a new weekly journal, is just being 
started in London, of which Mr. Holyoake is to be editor. It 
will undoubtedly be conducted with distinguished ability. 

Mr. Holyoake has appeared largely before the public as the 
author of many other works besides those herein mentioned. 
His “Self-Help by the People ” has been widely circulated, and 
his works on Grammar and Mathematics, have done much to 
simplify these studies. His character and general attainments 
are an honor to the Liberal cause. He is esteemed and respected 
by all save bigots. Therefore and thereby he has been enabled 
to introduce Atheistical principles, and obtain for them a can¬ 
did hearing, in quarters which would have been quite inaccessi- 
b.e to propagandists of lesser social weight and inferior literary 
standing. His amiable disposition and gentlemanly bearing 
render him popular with all who make his acquantance and he 
shows conclusively to the candid observer that a belief in 
myths and absurdities are not essential or necessary in making 
an individual a moral person or a useful member of society. 


892 


P. H. VAN PER WEYDE. 


P. H. VAN DER WEYDE, 

This eminent scientist was born February 5, 1813, in Nyme- 
que, Netherlands. He is a descendant of Walter Van der Weyde, 
the brave troubadour of the fourteenth century. His family 
emigrated from Germany to the Netherlands during the refor¬ 
mation, in which they took an active part. 

The subject of this sketch studied in Durpldorf, and later in 
the Royal Academy of Delft, where he graduated. 

His principal occupation has been that of a writer and teacher 
of science in Holland, and Professor of Mathematics in a gov¬ 
ernment school of design, and lecturer on Natural Philosophy. 
He founded, in 1842, a journal for Mathematics and Physics; 
and obtained, in 18G5, a gold medal from the Netherland Asso¬ 
ciation for the Promotion of Scientific Knowledge for a text¬ 
book in Natural Philosophy. He took an active part in the 
politics of Netherlands, writing extensively and acting as editor- 
in-chief of a Liberal daily paper, attacking the defects in the 
administration and successfully advocating reforms. 

In 1849 he moved to New York and established himself as 
private teacher. His inclination attracted him towards Prof. 
John W. Draper, by whose advice he went through the course 
of medical studies in the New York University, where he grad¬ 
uated in 1856, and was appointed Physician to the Northwestern 
Dispensary in New York. He abandoned the practice of medi¬ 
cine in 1859 and became connected with the Cooper Institute, 
where he successively filled the positions of Professor of Natu¬ 
ral Philosophy, Chemistry, and Higher Mathematics and Me¬ 
chanics. He accepted also, at the same time, the Professorship 
of Chemistry in the New York Medical College. In 1864 he was 
called to a chair expressly created for him, that of Industrial 
Science in Girard College, Philadelphia; the institution, how¬ 
ever, becoming a mere political engine, caused him to resign 
in 1866, and in 1867 he returned to New York to accept the 
chair of Professor of Chemistry in the New York Dental Cel- 


P. H. YAN DEE WEYDE. 


883 


lege, which he afterwards left for that in the Medical College 
for Women. 

For the last ten years he has been chiefly engaged in writing 
on practical scientific subjects for several journals, as the “Sci¬ 
entific American,” “Journal of Mining and Engineering,” etc. 
In 1869 he produced, with the Brothers Watson, an Industrial 
Monthly, entitled “ The Manufacturer and Builder,” which has 
since enjoyed an eminent success. His name is also mentioned 
as one of the editors of “Appleton’s New American Cyclope¬ 
dia,” to which he contributed valuable articles. 

Prof. Yan der Weyde is one of the most advanced, inde¬ 
pendent, and Liberal thinkers of the age. This is evinced 
occasionally in his writings, but more especially in his lectures 
before the New York Liberal Club, of which he is one of the 
founders. He agrees with Draper, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, 
Haeckel, and others of that class. He is perfectly familiar with 
their works as well as the doctrines of the older philosophers, 
as Kant, Leibnitz, Descartes, and Spinoza. His remarks before 
the Club and in other meetings, show an honest desire for a 
knowledge of the truth, whatever that may be, no matter if it 
requires the sacrifice of personal predilections. This is also the 
reason why he has steadily acted as the champion in unmask¬ 
ing the frauds perpetrated in in the name of Spiritualism, and 
being an acute experimenter and observer, he has detected the 
class of frauds alluded to, where scores of other witnesses were 
deceived. Besides his scientific attainments, he is familiar 
with several languages; he is an amateur artist painter of no 
mean pretension and a superior musician. Every Sunday he 
may be heard performing on the organ at one of the leading 
orthodox churches in Brooklyn. 

He has occupied a position of a similar character for twenty 
years. His treatment of the organ is said to be peculiar; all his 
performances are improvisations, eminently dignified and of a 
strictly religious character. They add more to the devotional 
feelings.of the orthodox congregation than is the case with any 
other organist. This is an interesting fact, considering that he 
does not himself share in belief with the orthodoxy; it proves 
that the devotional feelings are independent of particular the¬ 
ological doctrines. 


894 


WALT WHITMAN. 


WALT WHITMAN. 

This eccentric American poet was born at West Hills, Suffolk 
Co., N. Y., May 31, 1819. He was educated in the public schools 
of Brooklyn and New York, learned the printer’s trade, worked 
at it in summer, and taught school in winter. He next became, 
by turns, tourist, editor and carpenter. In 1855 he published 
“Leaves of Grass,” a volume of rhapsodical poems, without 
rhyme and often without rhythm, which has been augmented in 
each of five successive issues. This volume drew forth the high 
encomium of Emerson and several other literati of America and 
England. It also, for a time, created a perfect furor of sensa¬ 
tion, admiration, and criticism. Indeed, it was a brand new 
thing in the world of letters, and came very nearly creating a 
new school of literature. Its utterances are most radical and 
cosmopolitan. "Walt Whitman could never be made to wear 
any chains—religious, political, or social. He is one of the 
advanced thinkers of the day, and is unfettered by creeds, rites, 
or superstition. 

From 1862 to 1865 he was a volunteer nurse in the military 
hospitals in Washington and in Virginia, where he displayed 
the most sympathetic and unremitting attention to our wound¬ 
ed and disabled soldiers, until it completely broke down his 
original high vigor, and finally ruined his health. From 1865 to 
1874 he held a government clerkship in Washington. In 1873 
he was disabled by paralysis, brought about by his patriotic 
self-sacrifice ih the hospitals. 

His miscellaneous writings, including his diary of camp and 
hospital experience are collected in a volume entitled “Two 
Rivulets.” In 1876 he published a new edition of “Leaves of 
Grass. '‘As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free,” and “Democratic 
Vistas,” are also productions of his wonderful pen, not to men¬ 
tion several exceedingly unique poems, such as the “Proud 
Music of t>he Thunderstorm,” etc., contributed to our first-class 
magazines. He now resides at Camden, N. J. He was never 
married. 


HENRY BERGn. 


893 


HENRY BERGH. 


There is nobody more worthy of being commemorated for his 
disinterested labors of kindness and humanity than the subject 
of this sketch. Many men have done brave and noble deeds 
for honor, fame, and the hope of gaining the approbation and 
love of their fellow beings. Many a general has fought bravely 
and performed deeds of valor, but he had an army and a coun¬ 
try watching him and virtually cheering him on to perform 
noble deeds, but Mr. Bergh has shown a bravery and a self- 
sacrificing devotion not prompted by such incentives. He 
has, for more than a decade, almost exclusively devoted him¬ 
self to befriending the lower animals who can nei'her thank 
him for what he has done, nor even know aught of his efforts. 

In President Lincoln’s first term, Mr. Bergh was connected 
with the United States Embassy to Russia. He resided in St. 
Petersburg more than two years, and during that time wit¬ 
nessed a great many instances of cruelty to horses and other 
animals. He resolved at that time that when he returned to 
the United States he would organize a society for the preven¬ 
tion of such cruelty in this country. 

Upcn his arrival in New York in the early part of 1866 he 
took steps to carry out the measure he had matured in his 
own mind. He drew up a,simple form, expressing the object of 
the movement. He obtained the signature of some seventy-five 
of the most prominent citizens of New York, who joined Mr. 
Bergh in his praiseworthy efforts. He was, of course, made 
President of the new society, and has annually been reelected 
to the same position since. 

Soon after the organization of the Society, Mr. Bergh visited 
the Legislature at Albany and induced the passage of a law 
recognizing the rights of dumb beasts, declaring cruelty lo 
dumb animals to be a misdemeanor, and providing for the pun¬ 
ishment of those guilty of it. Armed with the new law, Mr. 
Bergh soon commenced to enfo^e it and bring the offenders to 


896 


HEN BY BEBGH. 


justice. He found all conceivable opposition to contend with. 
The truckmen of the city and all who used horses had been in 
the habit of regarding the horse as entirely their own property, 
with no rights save those granted by themselves. They were 
indignant and often insolent when Mr. Bergh interfered to pro¬ 
tect the poor brutes which they deemed they had a right to 
punish to their hearts’ content. He had a determined opposi¬ 
tion from this class, and the magistrates and judges of the 
courts were not in sympathy with him. The press of the city, 
which should have sustained him in his noble efforts, chose 
rather to ridicule him and his cause. Many a would-be funny 
joke was perpetrated at his expense. It was so unusual for men 
to take a firm stand in favor of the poor brutes, that they 
freely made sport of Mr. Bergh’s thankless labors. What he 
had to submit to; what he had to stand up against, what he had 
to overcome, will never be fully understood. 

After the fierce opposition had partially subsided, a state of 
apathy followed, more to be dreaded than the actfte hostility; 
but the measures he adopted soon broke the dreaded indiffer¬ 
ence and attracted public attention. Seeing one day by the city 
papers that a cargo of turtles from Florida had arrived at the 
wharves, he visited the vessel and found vast numbers of the 
helpless animals lying upon their backs packed closely to¬ 
gether, where they had been for three weeks without food or 
drink, some dying, some dead, some in a state of putrefaction. 
He caused the captain and entire crew to be arrested and taken 
to a court of justice; but from non-sympathy of the court, and 
upon the plea that the turtle was not an animal, the accused 
were acquitted. But some of the daily papers called attention 
to the fact, and the “Herald” especially gave nearly a page of 
ingenious description of an imagined convention of the lower 
animals to consider their rights and their wrongs, of which Mr. 
Bergh was chosen chairman. The result of all was, general at¬ 
tention was called to the subject, and within a very few days 
let:ers poured in from all parts of the country inquiring about 
the nature of tlie society, etc. From that day the movement 
has gone steadily forward. In the speeial work of this city, 
thousands of cases of abused, over-loaded horses, of horses being 
worked when lame and sore were befriended, and the hopeless 


HENRI BERGH. 


so: 


superannuated, and worn-out horses were mercifully shot. Hun¬ 
dreds of offenders were annually brought to justice, and fines 
were imposed in numerous ases; suffering cattle, sheep and 
calves that were cruelly treated in transit, by those who had 
them in charge, dogs and cocks in fighting pits were rescued in 
numerous cases, pigeon slaughter has been prevented, until the 
truckmen, the butchers, the sporting men and others have come 
to understand that if they inflict unnecessary cruelty they are 
amenable to legal punishment, and that the agents of Mr. Bergh 
will be after them. The effect of all this has been to greatly 
lessen the number of cases of cruelty to animals in the entire 
community. 

The funds to keep up this organization have boen partially 
derived from yearly dues of ten dollars each from regular 
members, one hundred dollars each from life members, to¬ 
gether with donations from many generous individuals. One 
of this class, a Mr. Bonard, bequeathed his entire fortune, 
$150,000, to this society. By these means the society has been 
enabled to own the commodious building in which its offices 
are located and with a yearly income of $10,000, 

Some one hundred and sixty men are constantly employed 
in this city alone to attend to the needs of the lower animals, 
and one hundred and forty are employed by the society in the 
State and outside of the city. 

Thirteen branch societies have been established in the State 
of New York. Kindred societies have been established in thirty- 
seven States, and laws for preventing cruelty to animals, simi¬ 
lar to those of New York, have been enacted. Italy and other 
European nations are also following the good example and are 
organizing similar societies. 

All this most commendable work has been the direct result 
of Mr. Bergh’s tireless efforts, which deserve to be placed high 
among the jmoudest and grandest achievements of man. To 
befriend those who have the power to return the favor is 
worthy and noble, but to befriend a class of animals that can 
make no direct return is worthier and nobler. Mr. Bergh holds 
that mankind are imm nsely indebted to the lower animals, 
especially to the horse, for the civilization which mankind 
enjoys to-day, and that if the world were to be deprived of 


898 


HENRY BERGH. 


the services of this latter animal alone, for the term even of 
twelve months, civilization would go backward and be nearly 
obliterated from the earth. It is most true, we owe more to 
the horse, in what has been done, and is now being accom¬ 
plished, than is generally appreciated. 

It is but an act of humanity and justice to an animal which 
has done so much for the human race, and is still contributing 
so largely to our advanced civilization, that he should not only 
be treated kindly, but that the wrongs imposed upon him 
should be redressed, and that those who inflict these cruelties 
should be punished. 

The good results from this cause have not been shared by 
the lower animals alone; the human race is unquestionably 
benefitted in almost an equal degree. They are rendered more 
humane, more merciful, more self-controlling, and consequently 
wiser and happier. 

Among the beneficial results yet to grow out of the organi¬ 
zation and influence of this society, is the formation of another, 
for the prevention of cruelty to children. It is believed that 
when our race has achieved its highest civilization and culture, 
cruelty to children and animals will be unknown. 

Mr. Bergh is nearly sixty years of age. He was born in the 
city of New Yew York, which has since been his home. His 
fortune has been sufficiently ample to enable him to devote his 
time to the service of the animal kingdom without pay or hope 
of remuneration. He is a modest, unassuming man, and dis¬ 
likes to appear in print, or to have paintings, pictures, or 
statues made of him. It was with some reluctance that he con¬ 
sented to have his name appear in this collection. We repeat, 
if any men are worthy of being commemorated by their fellow 
men, Mr. Bergh is one. 

In theology he is advanced and liberal, but unaggressive. 
“May his tribe increase!” 


SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 


899 


SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 

Susan Brownel Anthony, an American Reformer and Advocate 
of Woman’s Bights and Female Suffrage, was born in South 
Adams, Mass., Feb. 15, 1820. Her father, Daniel Anthony was 
a member of the Society of Friends. Though a man of wealth, 
the idea of self-support was easily impressed on all the daugh¬ 
ters of the family. She was employed in liis cotton factory, 
completed her education in a school at Philadelphia, and from 
1837 to 1852 was a teacher in the interior of the State of New 
York. Although the superintendents gave her credit for the 
best disciplined school, and the most thoroughly taught schol¬ 
ars in the country, yet they paid her but eight dollars a 
month, while men received from twenty-four to thirty dollars. 
After fifteen years of faithful labor and the closest economy, 
she had saved but three hundred dollars. No wonder she 
became an unflinching advocate of “Woman’s Rights.” 

She became interested in the cause of temperance, and an 
admission into a Convention being denied her on account of 
her sex, she called a Temperance Convention of women in 1819, 
and since that time has been conspicuous in various philan¬ 
thropic and reformatory movements. She has identified herself 
especially with the agitation for female suffrage, in the interest 
of which she has visited many parts of the United States and 
delivered numerous lectures and addresses, and otherwise 
worked very hard in the cause. 

In the Autumn of 1867 she went to Kansas, where she 
remained during the political campaign of that year, which 
closed by giving nine thousand votes for “Woman’s Suffrage.” 

In 1868 she founded in New York a journal called “The Rev¬ 
olution,” which she conducted for some time in conjunction 
with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, with 
whom she has also been a co-worker in the cause in which she 
is so much interested. She has acted on several occasions as 
delegate to the New York Working Woman’s Association. 


900 


FROUDE. 


FROUDE. 


James Anthony Froude, the English historian, son of Arch¬ 
deacon Froude, was born at Dartington rectory, Totness, Dev¬ 
onshire, April 23, 1818. He entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 
1836, took his degree in 1840, and two years after obtained the 
Chancellor’s prize for an English essay, and was elected Fellow 
of Exeter College. His sympathy with the High Church views 
which then prevailed, led him to entertain the idea of studying 
for the ministry, and he proceeded so far as to be ordained 
deacon in 1845. But he never undertook any clerical duty, and 
soon abandoned theology for literature. 

In 1847 he published a volume of stories, entitled “The 
Shadows of the Clouds,” and in 1849 “ The Nemesis of Faith,” 
both of which, on account of their free, advanced views, were 
condemned by the University and the clergy generally. Soon 
after the publication of the latter, Mr. Froude resigned the Fel¬ 
lowship, and was obliged to give up an appointment which he 
had received as a teacher in Tasmania. 

For two or three years he wrote almost constantly for 
“Fraser’s Magazine” and the “Westminster Beview,” One of 
his articles in the latter, on “The Book of Job,” has been 
reprinted in separate form. In 1856 he published the first two 
volumes of his “History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey 
to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada,” which was continued 
from time to time till its completion in 1870, in twelve volumes. 

His contributions to various periodicals have been reprinted 
under the title of “Short Studies on Great Subjects” (first 
series 1867, second series 1871). He also published in 1871 a 
small volume on “Calvinism.” He was installed as Lord Hec¬ 
tor of the University of St. Andrews, in March, 1869. 

In 1872-3 he delivered in the United States a series of lec¬ 
tures on “The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,” 
which have since been published (3 vols., 1873-4). His “History 
of England ” attempts to show that Henry VIII. was a much 


FROUDE. 


901 


better man than he has commonly been represented to be, and 
that Queen Elizabeth was indebted for her high reputation as a 
sovereign chiefly to the abilities of her Ministers. His delinea¬ 
tion of the character of Mary Queen of Scots is very severe, 
and has given rise to much controversyi 

Mr. Froude has, consciously or unconsciously, dealt with 
History from the scientific point of view, and substantially 
according to the common sense, scientific method. In this he 
differs from most other historians. This mode of treatment, as 
was to be expected, brought him into direct collision, not only 
with historians, but also with the whole theological and eccle¬ 
siastical spirit of England. No wonder he has been branded as 
Skeptic and Infidel. His friends declare that he looks upon 
this as a high honor, and time will certainly confirm his 
opinions. 

His high idea of the value of History may be gathered from 
the following noble extract: “ What are the lessons of History? 
It is a voice sounding forever across the centuries the laws of 
right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise 
and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eter¬ 
nity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and 
oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last; 
not always by the chief offender, but by some one. Justice and 
Truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be 
long lived, but doomsday comes at last to them in French Bev- 
olutions and other terrible ways.” 

We regret that our space will not admit of other gems from 
his exquisite historical cabinet. They are very numerous and 
very brilliant, and the reader is heartily recommended to secure 
them all, and feast on their marvelous beauty. 


902 


S. S. JONES. 


S. S. JONES. 


Stevens S. Jones, the editor and proprietor of the “Religio- 
Philosophical Journal,” a weekly newspaper devoted to the 
promulgation of Liberalism and modern Spiritualism, and the 
“Little Bouquet,” a monthly magazine adapted to the minds 
of children and youth, promulgating the same doctrines, was 
born in Barre, Vermont, ‘on July 22, 1813. His parents w r ere 
intelligent, liberal-minded people. His father was a farmer in 
moderate circumstances. His mother was a woman of very 
great executive ability, many of whose traits of character her 
son inherited. He was her only son. During childhood and 
youth his health was very delicate, yet he was trained to habits 
of industry from which he has never departed. 

At the age of nineteen Mr. Jones entered upon the study of 
law, and was admitted to practice at the November term of 
Court —the first term held by Judge Isaac F. Redfield at 
Montpelier, Vermont. He entered upon a successful practice of 
his profession in Hide Park soon after he was admitted, and 
remained there until his removal to St. Charles, Illinois, in the 
spring of 1838. 

He was married to Lavina M. Camp, the daughter of Philo 
G. Camp, on the first day of May, 1838, and on the tenth day 
of May they started for their new home in Illinois. 

For many years Mr. Jones confined himself to his profession 
and ranked high as a lawyer. He was twice elected Judge of 
the County Court, and discharged the duties of the office to the 
general satisfaction of the public. 

At an early day in the history of railroads of the Northwest, 
Mr. Jones was actively engaged as a railroad man. 

At the age of thirty-eight lie was delegated by the Iowa 
Central Air line R. R. Company as their sole representative at 
Washington to obtain a land grant from Congress to aid the 
State of Iowa in building four parallel roads, these projected 
roads to run west from the Mississippi River across the State of 
Iowa. For four years he attended upon Congress urging the 


S. S. JONES. 


903 


propriety of making the grant of land to aid in developing the 
resources of that now great and prosperous state. Even the 
Senators and Bepresentatives from that state were opposed to 
the grant to the great Central route on the forty-second parallel, 
which was finally, through his perseverance, incorporated into 
the grant which passed Congress in 1855. 

Mr. Jones always belonged to the Liberal school in religion. 
His parents were Universalists, and he, for many years after 
arriving at manhood was an active member of that sect. He 
was generally the presiding officer at the state conventions, 
associations, and representative gatherings of the order during 
the first fifteen years of their history in the state of Illinois. 

He dates his conversion to modern Spiritualism, mainly to 
the perusal of that remarkable work given through the early 
mediumship of Andrew Jackson Davis, called “Nature’s Divine 
Bevelations, and a Voice to Mankind.” 

The perusal of that work soon after its publication prepared 
his mind for the reception of the truth of spirit communion as 
given through the mediumship of the “Fox girls.” 

Once having been convinced of the truth of spirit commun¬ 
ion, he fearlessly proclaimed it on all proper occasions, never 
obtruding his views, however, upon unwilling ears. 

Often was he heard to express incidently, at the assurance 
given him by communicating spirits, that he would, at no re¬ 
mote time, be as deeply engrossed in promulgating the truths 
of spirit intercourse, and the philosophy of life, as he was then 
in his professional business. But not until the spring of 1865 
did he fully realize the truth of that oft repeated assurance. 
Then it was that he found himself fully committed to the work 
of promulgating the philosophy of life through the columns of 
the “Beligio-Pliiloscphical Journal.” Indeed, Mr. Jones, to 
many, has been absolutely reckless as to consequences, in hurl¬ 
ing thunderbolts at the fallacies that have, as he says, like 
parasites, fastened themselves upon Spiritualism. 

Mr. Jones’ Publishing House was entirely consumed in the 
great Chicago fire of October 9, 1871. H s loss was very heavy, 
and he received nothing from insurance companies. Some small 
sums were loaned him, but all was refunded within six months 
afterwards. 


904 


S. S. JONES. 


Most vigorously did he go to work to restore his publishing 
business. His paper for the week of the fire fortunately was 
mailed and on its way to the subscribers, when the “ fire 
fiend ” did its work. While the fire was yet raging, he wrote 
the matter for a new issue — smaller in size —and had it print¬ 
ed and mailed in advance of time, assuring his subscribers that 
although burned out clean, the “ Religio-Phkosophical Journal” 
would be continued without unnecessary delay. 

He then came directly to New York and purchased an entire 
new outfit, and in five weeks had the “ Religio-Plrilosophical 
Journal,” full size, in the United States mails on its way to 
its subscribers. In the meantime between the fire and the 
printing of the paper in its new dress, full size —he every 
week greeted his subscribers with the “Religio Philosophical 
Journal,” small in size, that they might not be in the dark as to 
the progress being made by him to reinstate his publishing 
house. None of the publishers in Chicago on that memorable 
occasion excelled him in enterprise. 

The great Chicago fire was an important event in the history 
of the “Religio Philosophical Journal.” 

It burned up everything material, about the institution. 

It aroused the latent energies of Mr. Jones and fired with 
new zeal the patrons of his paper. 

Liberal minded people were urged by old subscribers to take 
the paper. Thousands sent in the names of trial subscribers , 
paying for the same themselves. In this way many became 
deeply interested in the philosophy advocated through its 
columns, and date their conversion to Spiritualism from that 
time. 

Mr. Jones although his locks are whitened with age is in full 
vigor of manhood and devotes his whole time to conducting his 
business —financially and editorially. 

As appears from leading editorial articles in his paper Mr. 
Jones looks upon Spritualism as a means of evolving a rational 
system of philosophy which he calls “The Philosophy of Life.” 
He opposes in a very positive manner the organization of the 
believers of the truth of spirit communication into a religious 
body with creeds or confessions of faith. 

He holds that all phases of religion are but stepping-stones 


S. S. JONES. 


905 


tc> a system of philosophy which shall harmonize with science 
and sound reason. Indeed, he claims that religion bears the 
same relation to the Philosophy of Life t that alchemy bore to 
chemistry and astrology to astronomy. 

Mr. Jones seems from his bold and outspoken articles, that 
appear from week to week, and from month to month, in his 
paper and magazine, to look at all things in a philosophical 
light. He views all things in nature, and all acts of men, as 
the result of preceding conditions, as causes, absolute. Hence 
he complains of nothing, but works on in the full faith that as 
conditions are improved the effects of preceding causes will be 
of a higher order than they would under inferior conditions. 
He venerates wisdom and holds that knowledge is the only 
savior of mankind. 

He denies special creations and holds that all beings, human 
and brute, are unfolded from spiritual perms, which have ever 
existed, and in which sex and germs are eternally and unchang- 
ably fixed. 

It is but just that due credit should be given Mr. Jones for 
the boldness he has evinced in the radical, outspoken articles 
in opposition to the superstitions of what are claimed as super¬ 
natural religions, which from time to time have appeared in 
his columns. No radical paper in the country has been more 
radical than his, and some of the sturdiest blows that have been 
given the myths and absurdities of the past have come from 
the organ he conducts. If the uncompromising' Materialist 
finds in his columns that which he cannot accept as truth from 
his standpoint, he will also find much that accords with his 
views and which effectually exposes the darkened errors in 
which, for centuries, man has been blindly groping. As all 
Liberals, even, cannot arrive at the same conclusions, let us, at 
least, be fair, rejecting such as our reason disapproves, and 
giving due credit to that which meets our approbation. 

S. S. Jones, while sitting at his table in his office on March 
15 , 1877 , was shot at the base of the brain by William C. 
Pike, a lecturer on phrenology. Death immediately ensued. 
Jealousy prompted the deed. When tried a few months subse¬ 
quently, Pike was cleared upon the ground of insanity. 


WARREN CHASE 


906 


WARREN CHASE. 

In the little town of Pittsfield, N. H., on the fifth day of 
January, 1813, was born the subject of this sketch. His mother’s 
name was Susan Durgin. She was already the mother of three 
daughters. She was never married, and nothing is now cer¬ 
tainly known concerning the paternal origin of these daughters. 

The father of the last-born, the boy Warren, was one Simon 
Chase. Both parents were born in poverty and privations, rear¬ 
ed without the advantages of schools, and their lives had been 
struggles for existence upon the rock farms of New England, 
where it has been said the more land a man has the poorer he 
is. The only black mark against the character of the mother 
was having children illegally and unchristianly born. 

His mother struggled on with her burdens through four fear¬ 
ful years. She then hired a Quaker family to keep her boy that 
she might the better work and earn support. One night she 
retired well as usual, and the next morning her dead body was 
found in the bed. The Quaker family could not keep the boy 
without pay, and he was turned over to the town, whose three 
selectmen were overseers of the poor, to whom the “ scanty 
pittance of unsocial bread ” was doled out by the lowest bid¬ 
der, at public and annual sale. The boy being large and strong, 
and promising to be of value for work within a few years, one 
of the hardest and most heartless farmers in the neighborhood, 
offered to take him till twenty-one years of age. The select¬ 
men drove an unusually good bargain with him in making him 
agree to send the lad to school three months each year, and 
upon his reaching his majority give him one hundred dollars 
and two suits of clothes. This man’s name was David, and he 
appears to have been entirely lacking in the common feelings 
of humanity. 

Young Warren was the subject of savage abuse with tongue 
and hands and lash at every turn and return of day. His 
allowance of food was scarcely sufficient to sustain life, and was 


"WAR REN CHASE. 


907 


only such as was left after meals by the family. His clothing 
was scanty, and his schooling little or none. Through the 
severe winters, with toes and fingers often frozen, he was kept 
in the slavery of the farm. At last, at the age of fourteen, 
penniless, friendless, ragged, and unlettered, he resolved to run 
away. 

With difficulty he made his way to his native town. His 
appearance and complaints moved even the sympathies of the 
selectmen, who held that the heartless David had forfeited all 
claim to further service. Thus released, the little hero was now 
able to support himself and get some share of his time for the 
school-house, which to him, even at this age, seemed to lead 
to the goal of his ambition in life. A pleasant place was ob¬ 
tained for him on a farm where he could work summers, and 
do chores and go to school winters. This became his perma¬ 
nent home till he reached the age of manhood. Thanks to the 
kindness of his last master, Mr. Bracket, he was enabled to 
enter the academy at Gilmanton Corners, to oblain such educa¬ 
tional aid as could not be furnished him in the district school, 
where, five years before, he commenced to learn in the lowest 
class —an object of ridicule to the school. He was soon mark¬ 
ed as one of the mo-t active and ambitious students of the 
school. While at the academy he got hold of “ Volney’s Ruins,” 
and he became a skeptic. 

But poverty had set her seal upon him, and he was obliged 
to leave the school. Theology offered to open the door and 
educate him for the ministry, if he would get religion; but 
though he knew that many students accepted theological charity 
to obtain an education and an easy way of getting a living, 
Warren Chase spurned such a course, choosing rather a crust 
and freedom of thought with an honest heart. 

And now he started out into the world in search of fortune 
— loitered about the streets of Boston a few days, too timid to 
ask for employment — went to Brookline and labored a few 
weeks in a garden, returned to his native town and passed a few 
weeks in a law office; went to Albany, where he took passage 
West in a canal boat. He proceeded to Monroe, Mich., where 
he found employment in a variety store, married, had his little 
business broken up in the crash of ’37; shipped on a schooner 


908 


WARREN CHASE. 


for Kenosha, Wis., with his wife, babe, and the little remnant 
of his goods, which were lost by the wrecking of the vessel; 
arrived in a new country, penniless, with a sick wife and a 
feeble child; moved into an old, unoccupied claim shanty, hired 
an old cook-stove, with nothing to cook but half-grown new 
potatoes which he was permitted to dig, as an act of charity; 
secured the district school to teach for his board; passed three 
years of untold suffering and poverty, during which period two 
more children were added to the family; originated a move¬ 
ment for a settlement where the city of Ripon now stands; was 
elected a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1846, in 
which D. R. Burt was also a member; afterwards to the State 
Senate; was delegated to the National Convention at Pittsburg, 
that nominated John P. Hale; held an electoral vote for Hor¬ 
ace Greeley at the time of his death from the State of Missouri; 
surrendered his political prospects of the United States Senate 
to advocate an unpopular subject in the lecture field (Spiritual¬ 
ism). Such, epitomized, are the main incidents in the life of 
this self-made and remarkable man. 

During his later years all his energies have been devoted to 
the cause of Spiritualism. In 1866 he engaged with William 
White & Co., in the business of the “Banner of Light,” taking 
charge of their New York department at No. 541 Broadway, 
which he continued till May, 1869. Besides giving more lectures 
in more places on the Harmonial Philosophy than any other 
speaker, he has written “The Life Line of the Lone One,” 
“The Fugitive Wife,” “The American Crisis,” “Gist of Spirit¬ 
ualism,” besides another still in manuscript, which has been 
withheld ten years for the lack of means to publish it, entitled 
“Essence and Substance.” 

Mr. Chase is the oldest Spiritualistic lecturer now on the 
American rostrum. As an author, orator, and miscellaneous 
writer, his works and words will make him popular long after 
he is dead. He is opposed to the present marriage system, con¬ 
tending that marriage should be left entirely to the parties, to 
be regulated only by the general law of civil contracts. He is 
thoroughly anti-Christian, and his tongue and pen have ably 
and effectually championed the cause of radical Infidelity. 


HERBERT SPENCER, 


909 



HERBERT SPENCER. 

This distinguished English philosopher and author was born 
at Derby, about 1820. Not much is known about his early train¬ 
ing and habits. In course of time he learned the business of 
civil engineer, which, however, he abandoned about 1845. In 
1851 he published “Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential 
to Human Happiness Specified,” etc.; and in 1855 he brought 
out his “Principles of Psychology.” His highly thoughtful and 
philosophical contributions to the “Westminster Review” and 
other periodicals were reprinted in a volume entitled “ Essays, 
Scientific, Political, and Speculative ” (1857). Among his prin¬ 
cipal works, which have attracted much attention, are “Educa¬ 
tion, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical ” (1861), “ Progress, its 
Law and Course,” and “First Principles” (1862), “The Princi¬ 
ples of Biology” (1863), and “Illustrations of Universal Prog¬ 
ress ” (1864). Some of these are portions of his well-known 
“System of Philosophy.” 

This “System” is now fast being completed. Mr. Spencer 
is at this time working hard in the domain of Sociology, hav¬ 
ing finished his treatment of the previous sciences. 

The following is a skeleton outline of his Great Scheme: — 

i. First Principles. Part 1, The Unknowable. Part 2, Laws 
of the Knowable. 

[Mr. Spencer says: “In logical order should here come the 
application of these First Principles to Inorganic Nature. But 
this great division it is proposed to pass over: partly because, 
even without it, the scheme is too extensive; and partly because 
the interpretation of Organic Nature after the proposed method 
is of more immediate importance.”] 

ii. The Principles of Biology. Part 1, The Data of Biology. 
Part 2, The Inductions of Biology. Part 3, The Evolution of 
Life. Part 4, Morphological Development. Part 5, Physiolog¬ 
ical Development. Part 6, The Laws of Multiplication. 

in. The Principles of Psychology. Part 1, The Data of Psy- 


910 


HERBERT SPENCER. 


chology. Part 2, The Inductions of Psychology. Part 3, Gen¬ 
eral Synthesis. Part 4, Special Synthesis. Part 5, Physical Syn¬ 
thesis. Part 6, Special Analyses. Part 7, General Analysis. Part 
8, Corollaries. 

iv. The Principles of Sociology. Part 1, The Data of Sociol¬ 
ogy. Part 2, The Inductions of Sociology. Part 3, Political Or¬ 
ganization. Part 4, Ecclesiastical Organization. Part 5, Cere¬ 
monial Organization; Part 6, Industrial Organization. Part 7, 
Lingual Progress. Part 8, Intellectual Progress. Part 9, ^Es¬ 
thetic Progress. Part 10, Moral Progress. Part 11, The Con¬ 
sensus. 

v. The Principles of Morality. Part 1, The Data of Morality. 
Part 2, The Inductions of Morality. Part 3, Personal Morals. 
Part 4, Justice. Part 5, Negative Beneficence. Part 6, Positive 
Beneficence. 

It will be seen from the above that Mr. Spencer virtually fol¬ 
lows the classification of the Sciences inaugurated by M. Comte, 
and that, like M. Comte, he ignores all Philosophy that is not 
Scientific. In the Preface to the American edition of his works, 
the writer truly says: “ The system here presented has high 
claims upon the young men of our country, — embodying as it 
does, the latest and largest results of positive science; organiz¬ 
ing its facts and principles upon a natural method, which places 
them most perfectly in command of memory; and converging 
all its lines of inquiry to the end of a high practical benefi¬ 
cence,—the unfolding of those laws of nature and human 
nature.” 

Mr. Spencer has been severely criticised for propounding 
attributes to the Unknowable; for making, or seeming to make, 
this Unknowable the object of Religion; for counseling a con¬ 
stant symbolizing of this Unknowable as such object, while there 
is so much other crying work for our powers in this world of 
sin, sorrow, and misery; and for over-doing the Theory of Evo¬ 
lution, etc. But for all this Mr. Spencer’s System is par excel¬ 
lence , the English Bible of scientific and philosophic Infidels 
It is full of positive knowledge, as against the supernatural jar¬ 
gon of Christianity on the one hand, and the mere negative 
antagonism of destructive Ereethought on the other. Let all 
our readers study it as thoroughly as they can, even if it take 


HERBERT SPENCER. 


VI 

most of the remainder of their lives to do so. No one can oe 
said to have kept even pace with Modern Thought without 
doing this. And beside, the general study of this comprehen¬ 
sive scheme would save the world from the great infliction of 
a vast amount of crude literature in article, pamphlet, or book 
form, on the great questions of the day, which the world can 
do most excellently without. 

Mr. Spencer is a very colossus of Modern Freethought. He 
does not pretend to be infallible. Science and scientists are 
ever self-correcting; but the Scientific Method of Investigation 
is eternally true. The Church and the Priest all over the land 
are panting in pain and even shrieking in agony from the 
sturdy and never-ceasing thrusts applied to their very vitals by 
the spirit of the Spencerian Philosophy, and in a modified 
sense, (though they try their best to blink this fact,) by Mr. 
Spencer himself. 

Listen to what this great destructive and constructive Infidel 
has to say about Theism and the Theistic hypothesis of the 
Universe, or Creation by external agency: — “ Alike in the rudest 
creeds and in the cosmogony long current among ourselves, it 
is assumed that the genesis of the Heavens and the Earth is 
effected somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes 
a piece of furniture. And this assumption is made not by the¬ 
ologians only, but by the immense majority of philosophers, 
past and present. . . . Not only is this conception one that 
cannot by any cumulative process of thought, or the fulfill¬ 
ment of predictions based on it, be shown to answer to anything 
actual; and not only is it that in the absence of all evidence 
respecting the process of creation, we have no proof of corres¬ 
pondence even between this limited conception and some limited 
portion of the fact: but it is that the conception is not even 
consistent with itself— cannot be realized in thought, when all 
its assumptions are granted.” 


912 


PROF. JOHN TYNDALL. 


PROF. JOHN TYNDALL. 

This (Jistinguished physicist was born in the village of Leigh- 
lin Bridge, Ireland, in 1820. He early applied himself to serious 
study in the national school, where he soon mastered Euclid, 
Algebra, conic sections, and plane trigonometry. 

In 1839 he quit school and joined the Irish Ordnance Survey. 
He acquired a practical knowledge of every branch of it, 
becoming a draughtsman, a computer, a surveyor and trigono¬ 
metrical observer. In subsequent years he turned this experi¬ 
ence to admirable account in his investigations of Alpine gla¬ 
ciers. During his youth all his leisure hours were devoted to 
systematic study. For twelve years he never failed to be at his 
books before five o’clock in the morning. 

In 1841 he entered upon the vocation of a railroad engineer. 
To five years upon the Ordnance Survey succeeded three years 
of railway experience. But this proving unpromising, and ani¬ 
mated by a strong desire to augment his knowledge, young 
Tyndall resigned his position, and accepted an appoinment in 
Queenswood College. He here developed remarkable capacity 
as a teacher. 

Attracted by the fame of Prof. Bunsen, Tyndall quit England 
in 1848. and repaired to the University of Marburg, in Hesse- 
Cassel. He had the free use of the laboratory and cabinets ol 
this institution, with the instructions of some of the most cele- 
brated scientists of the day. His first essay which made him 
known to the scientific world was “On Magne-optic Proper¬ 
ties of Crystals, and the Relation of Magnetism and Diamag¬ 
netism to Molecular Arrangement.” 

In 1851 he went to Berlin, and continued his researches in 
the laboratory of Prof. Magnus. He soon, however, returned 
to London, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 
1852. He delivered an evening discourse at the Royal Institu¬ 
tion, February 14, 1853, which was so successful that he was at 
once offered a position in that establishment. In June 1853 he 


PROF. JOHN TYNDALL. 


913 


was unanimously elected to the appointment lie now holds, of 
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Poyal Ins. Ration. The 
first three years of his residence in London he devoted to an 
investigation of diamagnetism, the results of which were col¬ 
lected and published in a volume. 

In 1849 he went to the Alps for rest and health. But he 
could not be long in the presence of the grand physical phe¬ 
nomena there displayed without becoming interested in the 
Scientific questions they presented. Accordingly, for more than 
twenty years, the Alps have served the double purpose, to Prof. 
Tyndall, of physical and mental re-invigoration, after his 
exhaustive London work, and, at the same time, they have 
furnished him with a series of the most interesting scientific 
problems. Accompanied by his friends Prof. Huxley and Prof. 
Hirst, he has climbed the mountains and explored the glaciers 
to clear up the various vexed ques ions that have arisen. The 
description of his adventures and the results of his researches 
are given in his volume on “The Glaciers of the Alps;” also 
less fully in his “Hours of Exercise,” and in the “Forms of 
"Water.” In 1859, during his summer visit, he determined the 
winter motion of the Mer de Glace. The same year, at the Bel* 
Alp, he prepared his famous Inaugural Address. 

In the winter of 1872-3, he visited the United States, and 
delivered a number of lectures, illustrating them with a large 
amount of new and delicate apparatus, which he brought with 
him for that purpose. These lectures embraced the phenomena 
and law’s of light; reflection, refraction, analysis, synthesis, the 
doctrine of colors, and the extension of radiant action in both 
directions, beyond the light-giving rays, into the regions of 
invisible action. Then followed the principle of spectrum anal¬ 
ysis, the polarization of light, the phenomena of crystallization, 
the action of crystals upon light, the chromatic phenomena of 
polarized light, and the parallel phenomena of light and radiant 
heat. Over three hundred thousand “ Tribune Extras ” con¬ 
taining these lec:ures were sold. The proceeds of the lectures 
amounted to over thirteen thousand dollars, This he gener¬ 
ously donated to the establishment of a fund for the advance¬ 
ment of theoretic science. For the present the interest of 
the fund is to be devoted to the support of two American 


914 


PItOF. JOHN TYNDALL. 


pupils wlio may ©vine© decided talents in physics, and who will 
devote their lives to that work. His desire is that these pupils 
shall spend four years in a German university; three years to 
be devoted to the acquisition of knowledge, and the fourth to 
original investigation. 

Of Prof. Tyndall as an author it is hardly necessary to 
speak, as the reading public is already familiar with his works. 
Among scientific writers he stands almost alone in the poetic 
vividness, force, and finish of his style. Of an ardent arid 
jioetic temperament, and at home among the grandeurs of 
natural phenomena, there is often an inspiration in his words 
that rouses and thrills the highest feelings of the reader. He 
has undoubtedly done more than any oilier English writer to 
make known and to popularize the great scientific truth of the 
mutual convertibility of heat and motion. As a lecturer, he ii 
characterized by clearness, force, vividness of description, and 
the eloquence inspired by grand conceptions. He never reads 
his lectures, but holds his audience by the power of lucid and 
forcible extemporaneous statement. He is intensely in earnest, 
and is always as much interested in the subject and the pro¬ 
ceedings as the audience he carries with him. As an original 
and skillful experimenter. Prof. Tyndall is unrivalled. Holding 
the truths of science to be divine, he is impelled to dedicate 
his life to their discovery. He has won his scientific repu¬ 
tation as an explorer in the field of experimental physics, 
and to day he holds the most commanding place in the world 
as a philosophic thinker. His high scientific position gives 
acknowledged weight and force to his views. He is one of the 
most outspoken skeptics in the scientific school of philosphy, 
and his courageous temper leads him to deal candidly and fear¬ 
lessly with questions of theology. An independent and intrepid 
inquirer, tolerant of honest error, but contemptuous of that 
timid and calculating spirit which would protect men’s preju¬ 
dices from the light of investigation, he is without fear in the 
free and manly expression of his opinions. A devotee of science 
and a lover of truth, however unpopular; a man long drilled in 
the severities of scientific logic, it is impossible that he should 
not find much in current opinion to excite continued and tren¬ 
chant protest. 


GEORGE ELIOT. 


915 


GEORGE ELIOT. 

Marian C. Evans, the celebrated English novelist who is 
known to all the world by her nom de plume of George Eliot, 
was born in the North of England about the year 1820. Her 
novels, “Adam Bede” (1858), “The Mill on the Floss” (1859), 
“Scenes of Clerical Life,” “Bomola” (1863), “Felix Holt, the 
Radical” (1866), and “ Middlemarch,” and her poem, “The 
Spanish Gypsy,” (1868), are first-class productions, full of keen 
but sympathetic insight into the very inmost recesses of our 
common human nature. She has been most aptly called the 
‘Shakspere of the Novel.” And all her sentiments are in keep¬ 
ing with the liberal spirit of the nineteenth century. She is 
not a mere negationist, but on the contrary quite positive and 
constructive in her teachings. Her books may indeed be well 
called “The Novel Bible,” and ineffably superior to the ancient 
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, so replete are they with noble 
hints, suggestions, instructions, motives, and principles toward 
a higher life, and so well adapted to almost all possible posi¬ 
tions and conditions of modern men and women. 

Some years ago Miss Evans united herself—her fortune, lit¬ 
erary pursuits, person, and all — to the distinguished 

writer, George Henry Lewes. They did not undergo the humil¬ 
iation (for them) of requesting or accepting a priestly or mag¬ 
isterial proclamation of mutual love or bondage in their case. 
Both were so conscious of being on such an elevated plane of 
purity and prudence — in fine, of being such “a law to them¬ 
selves”— that what they did they thought to be a high right 
and duty for them to do, however inapplicable and even sinful 
and outrageous it would be for most lovers to take such a 
course. Say what we will, there is an esoteric as well as an 
exoteric doctrine of the sexual as well as all other relations. 
Indiscriminate “free-love” we approve not; a magisterial form 
of marriage we believe to be the best for most people; but we 
are not so blind as to ignore or decry the facts of high moral 
and esthetic sexual unions between really high and pure natures 


916 


GEORGE ELIOT. 


without any sanction from any quarter except from their own 
fine instincts of right and propriety. 

Professor Lewes and George Eliot have nobly lived together 
under the tegis of the very highest form of true monogamy, 
have voluntarily proclaimed themselves man and wife before 
their admiring friends, and have had, without any interruption, 
the welcome entree into the very best literary and other select 
circles of London. And most nobly have they worked together. 
They are both endowed with rare common sen e and the true 
philosophic spirit. But they are also very versatile, and emi¬ 
nently and worthily successful in all their works. 

A few specimens, taken at random, of George Eliot’s analy¬ 
ses of her own sex, and our sketch will be closed: 

“ There was something which she now felt profoundly to be 
the best thing that life could give her. But —if it w r as to be 
had at all —it was not to be had without paying a heavy price 
for it, such as w r e must pay for all that is greatly good. A 
supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rythm to a woman’s 
life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest 
needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that 
high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, 
and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not 
true that love makes all things easy: it makes us choose what 
is difficult.” 

“When a woman feels purely and nobly, that ardor of hers 
which breaks through formulas too rigorously urged on men by 
daily practical needs makes one of her most precious influences: 
she is the added impulse that shatters the stiffening crust of 
cautious experience. Her inspired ignorance gives a sublimity 
to actions so incongruously simple that otherwise they would 
make men smile.” 

“It is terrible —the keen, bright eye of a woman when it 
has once been turned with admiration on what is severely true; 
but then, the severely true rarely comes within its range of 
vision.” 


HELMHOLTZ. 


917 


HELMHOLTZ. 

Herman Ludwig Ferdinand Helmholtz, the celebrated Ger¬ 
man physicist and physiologist, was born in Potsdam, August 
31, 1821. At the age of seventeen he was admitted to the Royal 
Military School in Berlin, and commenced the study of medi¬ 
cine. In 1842, in his graduating thesis, he endeavored to prove 
the existence of an anatomical connection between the nerves 
of motion and those of sensation through the intermediate 
means of ganglion cells, and presented the results of numerous 
examinations of the delicate nerve-fibres of bugs, spiders, crabs, 
and many other of the lower animals. 

He was assistant physician at the Charity Hospital until 1843, 
when he became military surgeon and was stationed at Pots¬ 
dam. During the next five years, besides practicing medicine, 
he contributed to prominent scientific periodicals, and published 
a work “On the Conservation of Forces.” He was at once 
recognized as one of the great investigators of the day. He also 
delivered many popular lectures, some of which were translated 
by Prefessor Tyndall, and published in London. In 1843 he 
wrote a work “ On the Nature of Putrefaction and Fermenta¬ 
tion,” in which he proved putrefaction to occur independent of 
microrcopical living beings, though modified thereby, and then 
constituting fermentation. In 1841 he brought out his “Animal 
Heat,” with especial consideration of the question whether the 
living animal body gives off as much heat as is produced by 
the combustion and change of the food it takes in. Also an¬ 
other “On the Consumption of the Tissues during Muscular 
Action,” and another, “Proof of a Development of Heat during 
Muscular Action.” 

In 1848 he returned to Berlin and filled the position of 
“Prosecutor of anatomy,” and tutor in the Art Academy. In 
1849 he became professor of physiology in the University of 
KOnigsburg. Here he began his celebrated investigations as to 
the rapidity of propagation of nerve excitations, which attracted 


913 


HELMHOLTZ. 


great attention from scientific minds. He demonstrated that 
thought is not instantaneous, and that a certain portion of time 
is necessary for it to be conveyed from the fingers to the brain. 
He paid close attention to the examinations into the nature of 
sounds and colors, and the theories and facts he has presented 
to the world are far in advance of what has ever been effected 
in this line before. He became professor of anatomy and 
physiology in Bonn, in 1855, and of physiology in Heidelberg in 
1868, since which time he has been professor of physics in 
Berlin. His work of “Physiological Optics” was published in 
1857, which was a pioneer j>roduction in that line. His original 
researches were of a remarkable character. His work on music 
and sounds, published in 1862, cannot be described here for want 
of room; but in it he explained what philosophers and musi¬ 
cians have tried to do for 2000 years and failed. He invented 
the method of analyzing sound, thereby furnishing a means of 
acquiring knowledge in that line before unknown He a'so 
discovered the acoustic c.iuse of the vowel sounds of human 
speech, and was able to produce the same by mechanical 
processes. 

His contributions and published letters have been very nu¬ 
merous, the titles of which even will have to be omitted hers. 
His readiness and ability to present to the public, in intelligi¬ 
ble language, the results of his researches, have added largely 
to his fame. He has been delivering popular scientific lectures 
nearly thirty years, and he has added largely to the abstruse 
and intricate scientific knowledge of the world. 

As a strong and original thinker there are but few who equal 
Helmholtz. His earnest prosecution of science has entirely 
obliterated from his mind the last lingering shadows of an 
antique and obsolete mythology, and instead thereof he has 
stored his mind with the valuable and reliable truths with 
which the Universe is replete. He is indifferent as to the frowns 
of the priesthood, and regardless of their pretensions and their 
claims. He has no confidence in a system of theology which 
depends upon a pretended supernatural revelation for its found¬ 
ation and support. His observation and his reason teach him 
that the Universe includes all existing forces and conditions, 
and that above or below it, or ouisi e of it, there can bo nothing. 


0. B. FEOTHINGHAM. 


019 





O. B. FROTHINGHAM. 


Octavius Brooks Frothingham, son of Nathaniel L. Froth- 
Ingham, was born in Boston, November 26, 1822. He graduated 
at Harvard College in 1843, spent three years in the Cambridge 
Divinity School, and w T as settled as pastor of the North 
Church, (Unitarian,) Salem, Mass., March 10, 1847. He removed 
to Jersey City, N. J., in May, 1855, where he preached till May, 
1859, when he accepted a call to New York, and became pastor 
of a congregation which in 1860 was organized under the name 
of the “Third Unitarian Congregational Church.” He is distin¬ 
guished for the intellectual character of his sermons, very many 
of which have been published in pamphlet and book form, his 
wide scholarship in the various branches of learning, as well as 
for his impressive eloquence. 

He is one of the principal founders and leaders of the “Free 
Beligious ” movement, which has for its object the promotion of 
advanced Rationalistic ideas and ojiinions in theology, discard¬ 
ing supernaturalism, miracles, the divine origin of Christianity, 
and all forms of superstition in place of the received doctrines 
of sectarian and orthodox churches. 

He has written extensively for various journals, and contrib¬ 
uted numerous papers to prominent reviews. He has published 
more than one hundred and fifty of his Radical Sermons, and 
is author of the following works: “The Parables” (1864), “Sto¬ 
ries from the Old Testament ” (1864), “ Renan's Critical Essays,” 
translated (1864), “The Child’s Book of Religion” (1871), “The 
Religion of Humanity” (1872', “The Life of Theodore Parker” 
(1874), “Transcendentalism in New England” (1876). 

As a speaker, Mr. Frothingham is distinguished for clearness, 
a faultless diction, extensive research, logical acumen, and an 
agreeable, quiet style of eloquence. His enunciations are often 
<ol the most advanced radical character, and he seems to fear 
not to give utterance to the convictions to which a thorough 
and prolonged course of thought has brought him. He is de- 


920 


0. B. PROTHINGHAM. 


serving of the highest appreciation for the undaunted courage 
he has manifested and the fidelity with which he has followed 
the truthful teachings of reason and science. 

A few quotations from Mr. Frothingham are here appended: 

“As the human idea enlarges, its ideas multiply and exoand, 
its hopes gain in gra deur, its vision becomes transcendent, 
knowledge broadens the world, intelligence reveals the laws by 
which it is conducted, culture extends the relationship of being 
and multiplies the bonds of sympathy. The better creation is 
understood, the clearer its divinity is recognized, the more 
faithfully is its order venerated, the more profoundly are its 
beauty and goodness adored. The perfectly free, that is, the 
perfectly enlightened, the perfectly normal man, will worship 
in a temple of thought as much grander than “St. Peter's” as 
“St. Peter’s” is grander than a Methodist chapel. He will lift 
up an aspiration that will make the litany of the Church seem 
cold and broken. He will bend before a deity as much superior 
to that of Christendom as that is to a Pacific Islander’s idol. 
The larger the mind, the larger the deity, the sweeter the hope. 
The poet said: ‘An honest man is the noblest work of God ’; 
the philosopher replies: ‘An honest god is the noblest work of 
man.’ Give us then the honest man, and we will have the hon¬ 
est deity. Give us the man of integrity, the whole man, round 
and complete, and his worship will also be full and complete, 
a worship as glorious in spirit as clear in truth.” 

“There is a soul of truth in Atheism. The Atheist wishes to 
vindicate the prerogative of natural law; to demonstrate the 
natural order, the perfect sequence and consistency of the 
world, the sufficiency of the Universe, as constituted for all the 
ends of his constitution, the needlessness of interference with 
established conditions, the full enworldling, so to speak, of the 
creative mind. Hence his antipathy of the popular conceptions 
of God as a being of special plans and purposes, a God who 
must needs arrange and re-arrange the running machinery of 
creation, who can be moved by prayer, or who must resort to 
occasional expedients to prevent catastrophe to his projects. 
There is the soul of truth in the Atheist; a soul great enough 
to excuse graver errors than he falls into, and to relieve his name 
from the reproach that heresy-haters have fastened upon it.” 


ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. 


921 


ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. 

This distinguished naturalist was born at Usk, Monmouth¬ 
shire, England, January 8, 1822. He was employed for several 
years in the architectural office of his brother, and then devoted 
himself to natural history. In 1848 he accompanied Mr. H. W. 
Hales in a scientific expedition to Brazil, where, after a pro¬ 
tracted sojourn in Para, he explored the primeval forests of the 
Amazon and Pio Negro, returning to England 1852. His valu¬ 
able collections, especially rich in the departments of ornithol¬ 
ogy and botany, were in great part destroyed by shipwreck. 

In 18 3 he published “Trave's on the Amazon and Bio 
Negro,” and “Palm Trees of the Amazon and their Uses,” and 
in 1854 undertook a journey to the East Indies, where, for a 
period of nearly eight years, he explored the greater part of 
the islands constituting the Malay Archipelago and portions of 
Papua. While pursuing his researches relative to the fauna and 
flora of those regions, Mr. Wallace, unaware of Darwin’s pre¬ 
vious labors in the same direction, attempted the solution of 
the problem of the origin of species, and arrived at almost the 
same general conclusions which w r ere simuhaneously reached 
by that naturalist. 

His paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefi¬ 
nitely from the Original Type,” transmitted through Sir Charles 
Lyell to the Linnean society, was read before that body July 1, 
1858, coincidently w T ith the reading of Mr. Darwin’s paper “On 
f?he Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetu¬ 
ation of Species and Varieties by means of Natural Selection.” 
Though recognizing the efficacy of natural select ion in producing 
most of the changes attributed to its action by Mr. Darwin, he 
denies its competence to effect, without the joint agency of some 
higher cause, the transition to man from the anthropoid apes. 

In 1862 Mr. Wallace returned to England, where, for several 
years, lie was mainly engaged in the classification of his vast 
collection, which embraced over 100,000 entomological specimens, 


922 


ALFBED BUSSELL WALLACE. 


and more than 8,000 birds. The results of his Eastern explora¬ 
tions were partially embodied in “The Malay Archipelago, 9 
“ The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise ” (1869). 

Mr. Wallace has of late been permanently associated with 
the believers in Spiritualistic phenomena, to the examination ol 
which he has devoted special attention. His observations in 
this direction were published in a series of essays in the “Fort¬ 
nightly Review” for 1874, reprinted as “Miracles and Modern 
Spiritualism ” (1875). 

In 1868 he received the royal medal from the Royal Society, 
and in 1870 the gold medal from the Geographical Society of 
Paris. In 1870 he published “Contributions to the Theory of 
Natural Selection.” His elaborate work “On the Geographical 
Distribution of Animals ” (2 vols.,) appeared in 1876 in English, 
French and German. 

The Spiritualists may well be proud of the acquisition to 
their ranks of such an eminent scientist as Professor Wallace, 
who, in his researches into Nature and the laws impelling mat¬ 
ter, have equaled those of any living man. In connection with 
such men as Professor William Crookes, F.R.S., the celebrated 
chemist; C. F. Varley, F.R.S., electrician; Camille Flamarion, 
the French astronomer; Hoefle, the German chemist and author, 
he has done much to impart credit to the doctrines of Spiritu¬ 
alism and to raise it from the plane of ignorance and unscien¬ 
tific facts in which it may be supposed to have been located 
before such men as Professor Crookes and himself devoted their 
attention to the subject and subjected the phenomena attending 
it to most severe, critical, scientific tests. Wallace and Crookes 
devoted months of patient investigation to the various classes of 
phenomena alluded to, and from the high character for scientific 
attainment, intelligence and truthfulness which they enjoy, their 
statements are entitled to credit, or to a fair examination at least. 

In 1874 after patient and prolonged investigations in the 
direction indicated Professor Wallace published in the “Fort¬ 
nightly Review” an able paper upon the subject of his researches, 
which was afterwards printed in pamphlet form, entitled “A 
Defense of Modern Spiritualism,” of which numerous thousands 
have been sold. The same has been highly appreciated by his 
Spiritualistic admirers both in Europe and America. 


JAMES PAETON. 


923 


JAMES PAIlTON. 


This distinguished American aut hor was born in Canterbury, 
England, February 9, 1822. At five years of age he was brought 
to New York, and at nineteen he became teacher in an academy 
at White Plains, N. Y., and afterwards in Philadelphia and 
New York City. 

His first literary employment was on the staff of the “Home 
Journal ” of New York, with which he was connected about three 
years. Since that time he has devoted himself to literary labors 
and public lecturing. 

In 1836 Mr. Parton married Sara Payson Willis, popularly 
known as “Fanny Fern,” who, as an author and contributor 
to leading journals, obtained an enviable distinction. This con¬ 
genial union continued some sixteen years till the death of Mrs. 
Parton. Some three years after her death Mr. Parton married 
the daughter of his deceased wife, by a former union. This 
incident was the cause of some remark and comment. 

In March, 1875, he purchased a house in Newburyport, Mass., 
intending to make it his future residence. 

He has published a “Life of Horace Greeley” (1855 — new 
edition 1868); “a collection of “Humorous Poetry of the English 
Language from Chaucer to Saxe” (1857); “Life and Times of 
Aaron Burr” (1857 — new edition, 2 vols., 1864); “Gen. Butler in 
New Orleans” (1863); “Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” 
(2 vols., 1864); “Smoking and Drinking;” and “Peoples Book 
of Biography” (1868); “Famous Americans of Becent Times/’ 
(1870); “Triumphs of Enterprise, Ingenuity and Public Spirit” 
(1871): “Topics of the Times” (1871); “Words of Washington” 
(1872); “Life of Thomas Jefferson” (1874). In 1875 he was en¬ 
gaged upon a series of articles for “Harper’s Monthly” on 
“Caricatures in all Times and Lands.” For fifteen years he 
has been collecting materials for a life of Voltaire. 

Mr. Parton is emphatically an advanced thinker, and is en¬ 
tirely freed from superstition, mysticism and bigotry. 


021 


MAX MULLER. 


MAX MULLER. 

Frederick Max Muller the eminent philologist and teacher, 
son of the poet Wilhelm Muller was born in Dersan, Germany, 
December 6, 1823. He commenced his philosophical studies in 
Leipsic, where he took his degree in 1843. Induced by Hermann 
Brockhaus to give special attention to Sanskrit, he published in 
the following year bis first work, a translation of the Hitope - 
deca, a collection of Hindoo fables. 

After attending the lectures of Bopp and Schelling in Berlin, 
and examining the collection of Sanskrit manuscripts then pur¬ 
chased by the government, he went to Paris where he prepared 
himself, at Burnouf’s suggestion, to undertake the editing of 
the Rig Veda, with the Sayana Commentary. For the purpose 
of comparing the manuscripts of the Louvre with those in the 
possession of the East India Company, and those contained in 
the Bodician library, he went in 1846 to England, where Bun¬ 
sen and Wilson induced him to remain, and the East India 
Company assumed the expense of the publication of his edition 
of the Rig Veda. The first volume of this stupenduous work 
appeared in 1849, and the sixth and last at the end of 1874. 
Each volume consists of more than 1200 pages. This edition 
has a special value from the masterly introductions prefixed to 
the volumes which form important additions to the science of 
Indian antiquities and linguistics. 

The first volume of the second edition of the Rig Veda, with¬ 
out the Indian Commentary was published in Leipsic in 1856. 
He has published in German an excellent translation of Kalida¬ 
sa’s Meghadata, (1847); a charming novel entitled Deutsche 
Liebe (1857). English translation 1875). He is also the author 
of several papers in philological journals; but none of this class 
of his publications are in English. 

After a series of essays on the modern dialects of India, 
which appeared in the “ Transactions of the British Associa¬ 
tion,” and literary journals of England, he issued in 1854, on 


MAX MULL EE. 


925 


the occasion of the Crimean War, a treatise, entitled “Sugges¬ 
tions on learning the Languages of the Seat of War in the 
East.” After the publication of “Proposals for a Missionary 
Alphabet,” appeared his “History of Ancient Sanskrit Litera¬ 
ture ” delivered at the Boyai Institution of Great Britain in 
1861-2, (2 vols. 1861-4,) in which he shows in a popular style the 
bearing of the science of language on some important problems 
of philosophy and religion and which aided largely in overthrow¬ 
ing the faith so long implicitly placed in ancient myths and 
fables. 

His “Handbooks for the Study of Sanskrit” the first volume 
of which was published in 1865 are held in high esteem. They 
comprise a Sanskrit grammar and dictionary, and an edition of 
the text of the Hitopodeca with a Latin transcription, an 
interlinear translation and grammatical notes. 

In the years 1867-70 appeared several volumes of his essays, 
first published in periodicals, under the tiLe of “Chips from a 
German Workshop” upon subjects pertaining to the science of 
religion, mythology and the history of literature. In 1870 he 
delivered a course of lectures introductory to the science of 
religion, which produced not a little discussion in Europe and 
America. When they were published he added two essays on 
“False Analogy” and “The Philosophy of Mythology.” 

He lectured in 1872 before the newly inaugurated University 
of Strasburg, and i.i 1873 in Westminster Abbey, which brought 
forth bitter remonstrances and an animadversion from the Chris¬ 
tian clergy. It so completely undermined the foundation upon 
which their system rests that they became seriously a armed. 

Having settled in 1848 in Oxford, where his edition of the 
Big Veda was to be printed, he was invited by the Univer¬ 
sity to give courses of lectures on comparative philology as 
Taylorian professor. Though once defeated as a candidate for 
the professorship of Sanskrit, a new professorship of compar¬ 
ative philology was founded in 1868', with the name in the 
statute of the first incumbent. He has since 1865 been director 
of the Oriental Department Bodleian library, and in 1874 lie pre¬ 
sided over the Aryan Section of the first International Oriental 
Congress. As an advanced thinker, wholly emancipated from 
creed and superstion, few men of the time are more prominent. 


02G 


JAMES M. PEEBLES. 


JAMES M. PEEBLES. 

About two hundred years ago a branch of the Peebles family 
moved into the North of Ireland from the town of Peebles, on 
the Tweed, in Scotland, where they took an active part in the 
religious wars on the side of Protestantism. 

In 1718, to escape persecution, they emigrated to America 
and formed a settlement in the town of Pelham. One of the 
more adventurous removed to Vermont and settled in Whiting- 
ham, Windham County. Then the old homestead was founded 
by the great grand parents. 

James M. Peebles was born March 23, 1822. His parents 
were, like almost all the laboring people of the New England 
States, obliged to study economy and husband their means. 
The thin mountain soil grows only one product perfectly and 
that is man. One of his facetious biographers says: “He had 
a special liking for troughs ” as he had one for his cradle. He 
was unable as a youth to use any kind of tools, being so desti¬ 
tute of mechanical ability that he could not make a top, and 
his parents said many a time, “we can never make anything 
of James.” He was a restless truant, hating work and despising 
the confinment of the school.” The old “red-scliool house” 
still is vividly recollected, where the boy “James” received 
almost daily flogging for his pranks. It is said he bore this 
punishment like a martyr, never exposing a secret, rather suf¬ 
fering himself than causing others to suffer. Reckless and 
thoughtless as he Mas, he was an apt scholar, and at an early 
age became a teacher. 

Having from boyhood a j^eculiar interest in theological sub¬ 
jects, he was attracted to all religious gatherings and became 
converted first to the Baptists, and then to the broader faiih 
of the ITniversalists. At the age of nineteen he graduated at 
the Oxford College, a literary institution in the State of Now 
York, and preached his first sermon at McLean, N. Y., with 
such success that he remained as pastor for five years. In 1841 


JAMES M. PEEBLES. 


o :j 


he was regularly ordained at Kelloggsvlile, N. Y., and from 
thence ho went to Oswego, where ho remained as pastor from 
1853 to 1855. From thenee to Baltimore in 1856. His mind 
was constantly broadening and becoming liberalized from read¬ 
ing Swedenborg. His attention had been turned to Spiritualism, 
and, studying the manifestations, he readily became a believer 
in its cardinal doctrines. But he passed through a great struggle 
before he was made to cast away the old and receive the new. 
He went to Battle Creek, Mich., and for s'x years was pastor of 
a “free church” which aggregated around him and his teach¬ 
ing 

Thence he removed to Hammonton, N. J., where he has 
since resided, in a homo of his own, with his wife, who is a 
woman of sterling worth, and exquisite artistic abilities. From 
this home as a center he has since gone forth a veritable 
“spiritual pilgrim,” teaching the truth as it appears to him. 

In 1866 Mr. Peebles became attached to the editorial staff of 
the “Banner of Light,” and for several years his contributions 
to its columns w'ere the most attractive feature of that journal. 
During this period he assisted in compiling the “Spiritual 
Harp,” wrote “Seers of the Ages,” and after four years con¬ 
nection with the “Banner of Light” became editor-in-chief of 
the “Universe,” and soon after departed on his travels in 
Europe. At the eve of his departure he received the consulship 
of Trebisand, Turkey, in Asia, which gave him great facilities 
in his studies of Oriental life and manners. 

He paused by the way to deliver lectures on Spiritualism in 
England, Italy, and Constantinople. His lectures created a 
great sensation. On his return to England lie tarried for sev¬ 
eral months to lecture Sundays-and organize the d'seordant 
forces. His efforts may be placed among the first and greatest 
in that direction. James Burns, of the “Medium and Day¬ 
break,” earnest, whole-souled, and spiritual, was his right hand 
supporter. Criticisms on his lectures called out one of his best 
works, “Jesus, Myth, Man or God.” 

On his return, in 1870, in connection with Huds n Tuttle, he 
published “ A Year Book of Spiritualism,” which, perhaps, gives 
one of the best views extant of Spiritualism as then presented. 
Mr. Peebles lias constantly urged upon Spiritualists the recog- 


923 


JAMES M. PEEBLES. 


nition of the Shaker Brotherhood, and on many occasions has 
brought them to the front in a conspicuous manner. With res¬ 
ervations he accepts their social and communistic principles, 
and has a work prepared on “Shakerism and Spiritualism.” 
After returning from this journey, he conceived the idea of 
circumnavigating the globe, that he might see the “ heathen ” 
und compare the several grand religious systems of the world 
and compare their influence on the human conduci. Evidently 
he considers Brahminism and Buddhism, rightly understood, 
superior in their moral influences on the human mind, to sec¬ 
tarian Christianity. The reviewers of his book, “ Travels Around 
the World,” charged him with the attempt to extol the relig¬ 
ious systems of the East above the West. 

In this journey, after pausing to lecture a few w T eeks in Cali¬ 
fornia, he sailed for the Sandwich Islands, from thence to Aus¬ 
tralia, lecturing there three months, and from there to fill a 
two months’ engagement in New Zealand. He visited China, 
and India, studying the doctrines of the Buddhists and Brah¬ 
mins, then Arabia and Egypt, proceeding up the Nile as far as 
the ancient Memphis; visiting Palestine. When at Mount Zion, 
he affirms that he held a conversation with Jesus and some of 
his Apostles, Dr. Dunn, his traveling companion, being en¬ 
tranced. From there he went to Europe by way of Italy, 
spending some little time in France and England. 

In all these Eastern countries he distributed, like an enthu¬ 
siastic colporteur, books, tracts, and papers devoted to Spirit¬ 
ualistic literature. 

His book narrating these travels, written from his peculiar 
standpoint, has met with unprecedented sale and is in constant 
demand. 

Mr. Peebles being inquired of in the East how the ruined 
temples and pyramids of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America 
compared with those of Egypt, was compelled to say he had 
never visited them. The mortification of this confession inspired 
him to spend the winter of 1875-6 in the examination of these 
most unique and marvelous American ruins. In the Aztec and 
Maya relics he saw the same symbols of serpent, triangle, lotus 
cluster, sarcophagus, the winged god, and Phallus, that he had 
seen in Egypt, showing that several thousand years ago there 


JAMES M. PEEBLES. 


929 


must have been a commercial relation between the East and 
the West. His travels are by no means completed, for he con¬ 
templates a second voyage to the East, returning by way of 
South Africa and South America. 

Mr. Peebles has been elected member of several literary and 
scientific societies, and recently a Fellow of the Louisiana 
Academy of Sciences in New Orleans. Mr. Peebles has pre¬ 
pared a work on “ Our Homes and Our Employments Here¬ 
after,” in which he bases his theories on the expressions of 
those just passing the river, believing the veil is then lifted 
from the spiritual vision. 

The kindliness of Mr. Peeble’s nature was drawn towards 
the Indians. He wrote and talked much in regard to their 
welfare. He was opposed to war on any terms, much more 
when he considered it unjust. Ho was attached to the “Peace 
Commission ” sent out by Gen. Grant, comfjosed of Generals 
Harney, Sherman, Sheridan, etc. The Commission accomplished 
nothing. 

If there should, unhappily, be a classification of Spiritualists, 
Mr. Peebles would be ranked as a Christian Spiritualist. He is 
a man of great culture. He has almost a mania for old and 
rare books, and his library in this respect is one of the richest 
in the country. His leading characteristic is charity, sympathy, 
and devotedness to what he considers truth! 

Though rigidly honest, he is almost reckless in business, in 
fact the things of this life seem to have little interest to him. 
He aspires continually for the exalted ideal life of the spirit. 
His style of writing has very many admirers, though open to 
criticism, for its redundancy of emotion. He never writes for 
the sake of fine writing, but because he has something to say. 
As a speaker he is earnest, impressive and eloquent. Socially 
he is devoted, self-sacrificing, sincere and unselfish. Though 
genial and eminently social he is capable of a merciless sar¬ 
casm. A. J. Davis puts him down in one of his volumes among 
the saints. He has many tasks yet unaccomplished, which it is 
to be hoped he will fully complete before he departs to the 
“Summerland” which is his ideal future. 


930 


ROBERT COLLYER, 


ROBERT COLLYER. 


No better tribute to our democratic institutions is to be 
found than is furnished in the career of Robert Collyer, the 
poet-j^reacher. This distinguished man was born in a x^easant 
cottage on the bleak Yorkshire moors, and is descended from 
the humblest English ancestry. His young life was hedged in 
by poverty and privation, and humbled by ill-requited toil. 

Yet x>oor as were his opportunities he secured the rudiments 
of an education, and read every book it was possible for one 
in his position to obtain, hence he grew to manhood with 
endowments and culture that lifted him above his plebeian 
associations to the xdane of a true nobleman. 

Mr. Collyer was ihously trained, and early became a member 
of a dissenting church — Wesleyan Methodists—and was com¬ 
missioned as an exhorter. It is inexplicable to many that his 
wonderful powers of mind —which have since made him world- 
famous— did not attract attention and secure him recognition 
in his church. This may be accounted for on the ground that 
talent of a high order never receives recognition in any ortho¬ 
dox Christian sect; on the contrary, the man whose mind 
ranges beyond the limits of tread-mill logic that teaches about 
the established dogmas of the Church, is an object of distrust 
rather than of admiration. In 1851 Mr. Collyer emigrated to 
America, bringing his family and his blacksmith tools. Being 
very poor he did not dare attempt the battle of life in a city, 
but ijushed out into the interior of Pennsylvania, and settled in 
the village of Shoemakertown, where he made liorse-shoes and 
mended i>lows and repaired Dutch w r agons on week days, and 
officiated as a Methodist preacher on Sundays, for about eight 
years. 

While on a visit to Philadelphia, in 1858, he found himself 
one Sunday morning wandering along Tenth Street looking for 
a place in which to worshii) God; his attention was attracted by 
a crowd of people entering a church on a corner of Locust 


ROBERT COLLYEE. 


931 


street, and without asking what sort of doctrine was taught 
there, he entered, and being furnished a seat, listened io the 
first heretical sermon he had ever heard. The preacher was the 
venerable, and eminent Dr. Furness, now the oldest Unitarian 
minister in this country. The sermon was a surprise to Mr. 
Collyer, yet an agreeable surprise. He thought it wonderfully 
sensible, and at the close he went forward and asked the 
preacher where he could get a book that would tell him all 
about this new doctrine. 

Dr. Furness gave the desired information, and Eobert Collyer 
became very soon an enthusiastic Unitarian, and a year later, 
(1859) through the recommendation of Dr. Furness, he was called 
to Chicago to do mission work. 

His career since that time forms a familiar part of the his¬ 
tory, not only of Chicago, but of America, for he very soon 
became one of the most famous preachers on the continent. 

He is also one of the most rational and progressive. The 
title of one of Mr. Collyer’s bocks is “Nature and Life,” and 
this would be an appropriate title for any or all of his sermons. 

In person Mr. Collyer is portly, dignified and imposing. In 
manner he is inimitable, hence no intelligible description is 
possible. In the pulpit people style him awkward, but this 
does not do him justice, for awkwardness is the failure of 
studied effort to be graceful. Eobert Collyer makes no effort. 
His gestures and movements are wholly unstudied. 

Socially, he is companionable, genial, jolly, with a decided 
inclination to, and talent for, wit and humor; and specimens of 
humorous wit often creep into his sermons, surprising his audi¬ 
ence into smiling or into a subdued laugh. Indeed, next to his 
poetical imagery and expression, there is, perhaps, no single 
element that adds so much to his popularity as an orator, as 
his quaint and incisive humor. 

Mr. Collyer is but in the meridian of life, and being a grow¬ 
ing man, his career of usefulness as a champion of Freethought 
has scarcely reached its meridian. May we not hope that the 
marvelous growth he has already shown will continue to a 
ripe old age, and the sphere of his usefulness be constantly and 
greatly enlarged? 


932 


WILLIAM DENTON. 


WILLIAM DENTON. 


This courageous geologist and Radical became a member of 
the human family at Darlington, Durham County, England, 
January 8,1823. Like many of the world’s thinkers and reform¬ 
ers, he was born in humble circumstances. William’s father 
was quite poor, and ignorant of all scholarship —but a true, 
sturdy, industrious wool-comber, whose energies were fully 
taxed to support a family of four children upon a weekly sti¬ 
pend of ten shillings. The whole family occupied one large 
square room at a cheap rent, and the mother was necessitated 
to employ every available hour in binding shoes in order to 
supply the children with food. 

About the eighth year of his age he was placed at the day- 
school, in which the tutor gave experiments with a galvanic 
battery, to the delight of the pupils, besides giving practical 
lessons in Phrenology and electricity. At this stage of his 
career, William commenced his studies in Geology, reading 
closely on the subject and preparing, hammer in hand, for 
future researches. When eleven years old, he was hired by a 
currier of Darlington for a year, his pay being a half-crown — 
about sixty cents a week. After serving his time in the cur¬ 
rier’s shop, he w T as employed three months by a Methodist 
minister in his grocery store. This situation was highly satis¬ 
factory to his father, who, as a firm Methodist, supposed his 
minister must be a just man and one that eschewed evil. Wil¬ 
liam detected him giving false weight by placing a piece of 
lead on the scale, and told his father, who, being a strictly 
honest man, went to the Methodist-minister-grocer and de¬ 
nounced the dishonesty of cheating the public, at the same 
time withdrawing his boy from a place he found injurious to 
his morals. A little later he was sent to the grammar-school in 
Darlington, where he acquired the rudiments of Greek and 
Latin. 

At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to Timothy 


WILLIAM DENTON. 


933 


Hackworth, at Shilden, to learn the trade of machinist. Work¬ 
ing on iron during the day, the future Geologist did not waste 
his leisure hours at night. He read the works of Lyell, 
attended scientific lectures, and became a member of the 
Mechanic’s Institute. He also pursued his Geological studies, 
diligently searching for specimens among the debris of a rail¬ 
way tunnel near Shilden. At sixteen, he joined the Methodist 
Association Church, and within a year after commenced lectur¬ 
ing on Temperance and giving addresses on Beligion to the 
Sunday-school. Sometimes he would go round with the minis¬ 
ter, and give out the hymns, and offer the initiatory prayer. 
Ere long he became an adept at speaking, taking part in theo¬ 
logical debates, and addressing meetings held in large farm 
kitchens or on the open green. 

At length he got hold of Combe’s “Constitution of Man.” 
The minister said to him, “William, that is a very dangerous 
book,” and proceeded to prove the statement, by citing Combe’s 
illustration of the two boats. But the word “dangerous,” even 
from saintly lips, did not deter William from his search after 
truth. And so he studied Combe, found the illustration of the 
boats to be true, and straightway began to manifest heresy 
in his speeches. 

He was now nineteen, learning his trade under Timothy 
Hackworth. One day his master told him to go to a brewery 
to repair some machinery. This would conflict with his radical 
temperance principles and he began to speak of his conscien¬ 
tious scruples. “Conscience! ” sneered Hackworth. “ You have 
got your conscience as fine as a needle point. You shall go, or 
go home.” Denton went home. Thus thrown out of employ¬ 
ment, he next tried teaching, obtaining an appointment to a 
school in Newport. He also lectured on Temperance, and 
preached frequently in London. 

He continued to read and study and think, all the while 
growing away from the Methodism of his youth. As he became 
more and more free from the narrow shackles of creed he 
preached with new and increasing power. He often used to 
wa’k twelve miles to Cardiff on Saturday, preach, three times on 
Sunday, and walk back on Monday morning in time for the 
duties of his school. At this time he was one of the most 


934 


WILLIAM DENTON. 


active fighters for temperance in England. In the open air, 
through snow and storm and hardship, firm as a rock, imperr 
vious to insult, and violence and rotten eggs, William Denton 
stepped grandly forward and fought the demon of drink, w r hen 
there was not a solitary minister of the gospel who had the 
courage to offer him a word of sympathy and encouragement. 

He continued lecturing on Temperance, Mesmerism and Rad- 
icalism, until having raised against himself a legion of foes, 
dismissed from school, and obliged to sell his books to prevent 
starvation, he at length resolved to come to America. He 
landed in Philadelphia in 1848. His life here in the United 
States continued a series of struggles with poverty and ill for¬ 
tune. Teaching whenever he could and working with pen, axe, 
and spade, he barely managed to maintain himself for a few 
years. Space cannot be here given to follow him through his 
eventful years of change and trouble, as a laborer and lecturer. 

During the latter years of his life he continued to lecture 
and write, making New England his principal field of opera¬ 
tions. A series of his discourses are published. Others are to 
follow. He has also a work nearly ready on the origin of man. 

The “ Radical Rhymes,” “Soul of Things,” “Our Planet,” 
“Past, Present and Future,” “Irreconcilable Records, or Gen¬ 
esis and Geology,” “The Deluge in the Light of Modern Sci¬ 
ence,” “Common Sense Thoughts of the Bible,” “Man’s True 
Saviors,” “Be Thyself,” “What is Right?” “Christianity 
no Finality,” “Sermons from Shakspere’s Text,” “Who are 
Christians,” are the best known of his writings. He has estab¬ 
lished a reputation as a Geologist, and is reckoned among the 
ablest advocates of the Spiritualistic philosophy. He has built 
himself a commodious house on ten acres of land, in Wellesley, 
Mass., where with his gifted wife, and five children, he loves to 
feel at home. As one of the most advanced of scientists and 
radical reformers, Wm. Denton has done much to break the 
shackles of orthodoxy and popular prejudice. His life has been 
a series of battles with want and hardships; but patient, per¬ 
severing, and valiant as Hannibal, he has fought and fainted 
not. His life of self-sacrifice, endurance and moral worth, offers 
a series of valuable lessons to others, who need the inspiration 
of living examples of heroism, nobility and manhood. 


RENAN. 


935 


RENAN. 

Joseph Ernest Benan, the eminent French philologist, Ori¬ 
entalist, and romancer, was born at Treguier, in Brittany, in 
the year 1823. He was intended for the ecclesiastical profession, 
and went to Paris at an early age in order to study. His abili¬ 
ties having attracted attention, he w*as chosen, at the termina¬ 
tion of his classical studies, to follow the course of theology at 
the Seminary of St. Sulpice, where he showed a taste for the study 
of languages and philosophy, and commenced learning the He¬ 
brew, Arabic, and Syriac. But his independence of thought did 
not accord with the necessary qualifications for the priesthood, 
and he quitted the Seminary in order to be better able to pur¬ 
sue his own course. In fact, he renounced the priestly profes¬ 
sion because he doubted the truth of the orthodox creed. 

In 1818 he gained the Yolney prize for a memoir upon the 
Semitic tongues, which has since been published under the title 
of “General History and Comparology of the Semitic Languages” 
(1855). His “Study of the Greek Language” was crowned by 
the Institute, which elected him one of their body. In 1856 he 
W’as admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1860 
was sent to Syria to search for relics of ancient learning and 
civilization. Soon after his return he was appointed Professor 
of Hebrew in the College of France. In 1363 he published his 
well-known work, the “Life of Jesus,” which he wrote after 
his voyage to Syria, and of which numerous editions have been 
published in several languages. The effect produced by this 
work was the cause of Benan’s dismissal from office, at the 
instance of the clerical party; a measure, however, which was 
revoked three years afterward. • 

The immense success of his “Life of Jesus” was no doubt 
partly owing to the perfection of its style and its denunciation 
as impious by several French prelates. Mr. Benan has also 
published numerous memoirs on comparative philology, etc., 
besides a translation of the Book of Job, etc. Among his late 
works is a “History of the Origin of Christianity,” “The Apos- 


936 


EE NAN. 


ties” (1866), and the “Life of St. Paul ” (1869), the last of which 
has attracted great attentien and criticism. 

Perhaps no book of the century created a greater sensation 
than Renan’s “Life of Jesus,” Not only the learned and the 
liberal devoured it; but it was treasured in the boudoirs of the 
most aristocratic and conservative ladies of all civilized lands; 
and the youth of both sexes, brought up in the strictest ortho¬ 
dox circles, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, 
became possessed of it, and read and re-read it as they would 
a soul-absorbing romance. In it the author did his best to 
weave a web of entrancing interest about a semi-historical 
Jesus, whose personal charms and majestic influence so bewil¬ 
dered the simple multitude, especially the unsophisticated 
women and children, that they hung with delight upon his 
words of sweetness and consolation, and attributed to him 
wonderful prophecies and miracles, which, however, always, 
excepting those that were really created by superstition, Renan 
interprets as the utterances of genius and the results of con¬ 
scious or unconscious magnetism. Notwithstanding the pseudo- 
historiand often worthlessly romantic character of the “Life ” 
still it has done for freedom of inquiry into the very holiest 
arcana of Christianity what no other late w T ork, taken by itse’f, 
has done or could do. The author and his books are signifi¬ 
cant, peculiar, and popular indices of the relations of Modern 
Thought to effete Christianity. 

As we have hinted, Renan’s “Jesus” is mostly a creation of 
Renan’s own imagination. (All his books, indeed, ought to be 
read and digested “with a grain of salt.”) There can scarcely 
be a doubt that his “Jesus” is as unhistorical as that of the 
Gospels. Strauss will ever remain as the great authority on 
this vexed question. With all the show of introduction and 
quotation, Renan has utterly failed to make out a case; but he 
has made the indelible impression in the minds of thousands 
that any one Life of Jesus,’ written by ordinary mortal, priv¬ 
ileged medium, spirit direct, Ernest Renan, or Henry Ward 
Beecher, is just as good and trustworthy as any other “ Life” 
of him, penned or yet to be penned. Let the reader try his 
hand on this interesting question, and create a character to suit 
himself. 


WARREN SUMNER BARLOW. 


937 


WARREN SUMNER BARLOW. 

The author of “The Voices” and other poems was born in 
Woodstock, Conn., March 20, 1820 of pious Baptist parents, by 
whom he was strictly and carefully reared. His father was 
very familiar with the Bible and was almost regarded as an 
oracle in matters pertaining to “the true creed,” but he failed 
to answer the inquiries of his son touching some of the “mys- 
ter'es of godliness,” to the enquirer’s satisfaction, and he enter¬ 
tained doubts on certain points when quite young. At the age 
of fourteen, at a time of religious excitement, he drifted into the 
Church and tried to believe what was preached, but he was so 
troubled with the dogmas of “Foreordination” “vicarious atone¬ 
ment,” “eternal damnation,” etc., that he could not be a full 
believer. He had many troubles in reconciling these difficult 
points with his sense of right and justice and often appealed to 
his pastor and to his parents for light, but got little, and finally 
concluded he preferred going to hell where there was no God. 
rather than to heaven where the God reigned who created mill¬ 
ions of helpless beings for the purpose of damning them for¬ 
ever, who “ laughs at their calamity and mocks when their fear 
eometh.” He concluded the Devil himself could be no worse 
than that, and the Church ceased to give him consolation and 
at the age of twenty-one he received a letter of dismissal. 

In a letter to the writer he says:—“After a careful and I 
trust impartial investigation for ten years, I became a believer 
in spiritual communion and have cherished this belief for nine¬ 
teen years. I feel that the “windows of heaven are open ” and 
that our friends can and do commune with us, and watch over 
us, with more than earthly love, inspiring us to higher and 
nobler conceptions of our Heavenly Father, and a more chari¬ 
table appreciation of our brother man, and give us a foretaste 
of that happy land to which we haste.” 

Mr. Barlow’s poems are replete with the most radical senti¬ 
ments. He spares not even sacred errors, and strikes with a 
keen blade. 


938 


PROF. YOUMANS. 


YOUMANS. 

Edward Livingston Youmans, the American scientific writer 
and editor, was born at Coeymans, New York, June 3, 1821. In 
his childhood his parents settled in Saratoga. At the age of 
thirteen he was attacked with optlialmia, resulting in blindness 
for several years, from which he recovered with very obscure 
vision and constant liability to a recurrence of the disease. 

He studied elementary chemistry and physics, with the aid 
of his sister, who experimented and read for him white he 
wrote with a machine of his own invention. In 1851 he issued 
a chemical chart illustrating composition by colored diagrams, 
which was revised and enlarged in 185G. In 1852 he published 
the “Class-book of Chemistry,” which was revised in 1863, and 
was translated into Spanish in 1866. He re-wrote it in 1875 oil 
the basis of recent chemical doctrines and discoveries. 

In 1853 appeared “Alcohol and the Constitution of Man,” 
and in 1855 “The Chemical Atlas,” with text. In 1857 he pub¬ 
lished “The Hand-book of Household Science,” and in 1864 
“The Correlation and Conservation of Forces,” a compilation 
with an introduction. In 1867 he printed “ The Culture De¬ 
manded by Modern Life,” a compilation also with an introduc¬ 
tion, and containing an original lecture “On the Scientific Study 
of Human Nature.” 

He has pursued a course of medical study, and received 
the degree of M.D. from the University of Vermont, but has 
not practised. He has lectured extensively, and in his courses 
on “The Chemistry of the Sunbeam,” and “The Dynamics of 
Life,” was the first to expound popularly the doctrines of the 
conservation of energy and the mutual relations of forces. 

In 1871 he planned the “International. Scientific Series” and 
arranged for the publication of the works in New York, Lon¬ 
don, Paris, and Leipsic, the arrangement being subsequently 
extended to St. Petersburg and Milan. The project was based 
on the idea of payment to the authors from the sale in all 
countries. Twenty volumes have been issued up to the present 


PE OF. YOU MANS. 


039 


time (1876). In connection with this enterprise, and those of a 
similar character, he has made several visits to Europe. In 1872 
he established the “Popular Science Monthly” in New York. 

Dr. Youmans has been instrumental in publishing the works 
of Herbert Spencer in this country, and he has also promoted 
the circulation here of the works of various European scientific 
writers, with the same remuneration that is allowed to Ameri¬ 
can authors. 

His sister, Eliza Anne Youmans, became interested in the 
scientific studies while she aided her brother to pursue them, 
and her fondness for children led her to apply them to early 
education. In 1870 she published the “First Book of Botany.” 
These are intended to promote the systematic study of plants 
as objects, in place of the loose, incoherent “object lessons” 
in ge. eral use. She also prepared an enlarged edition of Hens- 
low’s “Botanical Charts” (1873), translated from the French 
Quatrefage’s “Natural History of Man” (1875), and contributed 
to the “Popular Science Monthly” and other periodicals. 

It is a cheerful tribute that the better portion of the world 
pays to men like Dr. Youmans, who spend their lives in impart¬ 
ing the treasures of science to their fellow men; in laying be¬ 
fore them the results of the investigations and researches of 
the astronomer, the geologist, the chemist, the naturalist, the 
special scientists in all departments of real knowledge. It is 
not easy to over-estimate the value of such labors to the mass 
of mankind, who are more or less earnestly searching for truth 
and reaching for the light which science imparts; and their valu¬ 
able results must be more and more apparent as time ad vances. 
Compared with these results the labors of the hundreds of thou¬ 
sands, yes millions of priests, who for ages have led the world 
in the leading strings cf mysticisms and absurd superstitions, 
and have bound upon its inhabitants the manacles of creeds 
and dogmas —in point of utility we say—the efforts of the 
priesthood fall into utter insignificance. Altliou h the rule of 
piiestcraft has cost the world untold millions in treasure and 
in blood, science lays no heavy burdens upon the race. Its rule 
is easy, benignant, enlightening and elevating. The teachers of 
science are immensely above the priests of darkening creeds. 


940 


PH. FREDERICK LEISS. 


PH. FREDERICK LEISS. 

Dr. Phil. Frederick Leiss, German American author, was 
born July 12, 1824, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, graduated at 
Heidelberg where he afterwards lectured on philosophy. In 
1848 he was connected with the Frankfurter Oberpostamts Zei - 
tung, a prominent German paper, and soon was appointed to 
the position of librarian of the Darmstadt library. From 1860-66 
he lived alternately in Paris and London, studying Asiatic lan¬ 
guages, contributing to the public journals and occupying him¬ 
self with literary work. In 1867 he came to the United States, 
and in 1871 commenced to issue in New York Der Freidenker , a 
monthly magazine advocating the cause of Freethought in ably 
written popular philosophical articles. To the exertion of Dr. 
Leiss is due the formation of a great many freethinkers’ socie¬ 
ties and clubs amongst Germans and Scandinavians over the 
Western States. Among his literary production are Skizzen aus 
Holland , (Frankfort, 1851,) Poems (Leipsic 1855,) * Intellectual 
Property” (London 1862,) “Sexual Physiology” (New York 1876.) 

Carl Peter Heinzen, German-American journalist, born 1809, 
in Rhenish Prussia, studied at Bonn, served w T ith distinction in 
the Dutch Asiatic colonies, returned to Germany, where he 
issued a political pamphlet “On the Prussian Bureaucracy,” 
for which he was prosecuted and had to flee the country. He 
came to New York in 1848, but returned on the outbreak of the 
German Revolution, had to flee again to Switzerland, from there 
to England, and came in 1856 for the second time to New York. 
Here he issued the weekly “Der Pionier,” a radical Freethouglit 
paper, which he in 1859 transferred to Boston. A collection of 
his literary productions was printed in New York in 1860. Here 
he has since done good service in battling evils theological and 
political in his own way. He is an uncompromising foe to 
clerical frauds and fossilized errors. 


HUXLEY. 


941 


HUXLEY. 

Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing, Middlesex, in 
1825. In his youth he was a surgeon in the Royal navy. About 
1848 he signally proved his ability as a scientific scientist in a 
treatise “On the Anatomy and Affinities of the Eamily of the 
Medusae.” About 1854 he succeeded Mr, Forbe, the eminent 
naturalist, as Professor of Palaeontology at the School of Mines, 
and then became Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institu¬ 
tion. Among his principal works are a “History of the Oceanic 
Hydrozoa” (1857), “Man’s Place in Nature” (1863), “Lectures 
on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy” (1864), and the 
famous Essay entitled “Protoplasm; or. The Physical Basis of 
Life” (1869). His “Lay Sermons ” are excellent popular expo¬ 
sitions of several important points, theories, and discoveries in 
general science, and so plainly and suggestively written that 
“he who runs may read.” He favors, within certain limitations, 
the Spencerian and Darwinian theories of Evolution and Nat¬ 
ural Selection, with their Corollaries. In Sociology, however, 
he differs widely from Mr. Spencer’s elaboration of the doctrine 
of “Laissez faire,” or “Nihilism in Government.” In 1869 he 
was chosen President of the British Association for 1870. He 
has contributed numerous memoirs to the Transactions of the 
Royal Geographical and Zoological Societies. 

Mr. Huxley is a very popular lecturer on natural science, 
and stands in the foremost ranks among British physicists and 
physiologists. His paper on “Animals considered as Automata,” 
read before “ The British Association for the Advancement of 
Science,” at Belfast in 1874, especially when taken in conjunc¬ 
tion, as it generally w T as, with Professor Tyndall’s world-famous 
Inaugural Address on the “Advancement of Science,” read 
before the same Association, created a profound impression, 
especially among the clergy. It was one of the ablest papers 
that ever emanated from his pen, whether we believe in the 
theory enunciated or not. Huxley is a most able Thinker. 


942 


A. J. DAY IS. 


ANDREW JACKSON DAYIS. 

Thirty-two years ago ail uneducated, unsophisticated young 
boy was suddenly brought out from obscurity and became a 
public wonder on account of his strange and inexplicable pow¬ 
ers. The world began to ask, Who is A. J. Davis? Since then 
his prolific pen has produced books enough to stock a library, 
and his “Magic Staff” has fully satisfied the curiosity of the 
reading rviblic. To-day hi 3 name is a household word in every 
part of the world penetrated by the genial light of the Harmo- 
nial Philosophy. 

His biography, briefly stated, is as follows: He was born in 
Blooming Grove, Orange County, N. Y., August 11, 1826. His 
father was an humble mechanic — half weaver and half shoe¬ 
maker-industrious and respectable, but extremely poor. After 
steadily combating the host of petty obstacles which ever 
beset the poor man’s presence, with the exception of intemper¬ 
ance, the honest cordwainer resolved on a change of residence. 
After experiencing a thousand and one nameless little hardships 
and household shipwrecks, the impoverished family finally lo¬ 
cated in a disagreeable tenement in Staatsburgh, New York. 

When the subject of our sketch arrived at the years of rec¬ 
ollection, his parents were residing in the town of Hyde Park, 
Dutchess County, N. Y. At an early age Jackson was compel¬ 
led to toil and watchfulness to aid in supporting his father’s 
family. This gave him habits of steadiness and sobriety far 
beyond his years. During two years of his residence at Hyde 
Park he was employed by a Mr. Woodworth in the capacity of 
a keeper of cattle. On the first of September, 1838, he removed 
with his father to Poughkeepsie, after which, for some eighteen 
months, he -worked with his father at his trade. 

Immediately after this he was engaged in the grocery of 
Nicholas Lawrence, whose store his father subsequently pur¬ 
chased, and in which he continued until the spring of 1841, 
when he bound himself as an apprentice to a Mr. Ira Arm- 


A. J. DAVIS. 


913 


strong. His early education was nearly neglected — liis father, 
a simple-hearted, unsophisticated shoemaker, much addicted to 
drink, and his mother, a weak and gentle woman, whose only 
delight was in mingling in scenes of sickness and sorrow —feel¬ 
ing no anxiety concerning the education of their son. Owing 
to this fact, and the poverty of his parents, Jackson’s school 
tuition was confined to about five months, during which time 
he learned to read imperfectly, to write a fair hand, and to do 
simple sums in arithmetic. 

From early youth until ho entered upon his public career he 
was kept at such manual employments as were adapted to his 
age, during which time his little earnings and affectionate atten¬ 
tions contributed greatly to the support of his father’s family. 
The entire reading of his youth was confined to that of a light 
and juvenile description. During his two years of apprenticeship 
with Mr. Armstrong he established a character for integrity 
and faithfulness rarely equaled. 

But mesmerism stepped in and put a sudden end to his 
apprenticeship. His career in clairvoyance commenced in this 
wise: In the autumn of 1843 J. Stanley Grimes delivered in 
Poughkeepsie a course of lectures on Animal Magnetism. 
These lectures and the experiments accompanying them, caused 
considerable excitement in the village. Young Davis was mag¬ 
netized in a tailor’s shop, and exhibited powers of clairvoyance 
truly surprising. A great variety of tests were submitted, such 
as requiring him to visit and describe places which he had 
never seen, to read from a closed volume with bandaged eyes, 
etc., and the result was to establish his power of interior sight 
beyond dispute. These experiments took place December 1, 1843. 
From this time forward the boy was made the subject of scien¬ 
tific tests: first, for the purpose of establishing the reality of 
the clairvoyant state, than for examining and prescribing for 
the diseased. On March 7, 1844, he fell, without the aid of 
magnetic process, into a strange state, which continued during 
two days, in which he was insensible to all external things, liv¬ 
ing wholly in the interior condition. It was during this extra¬ 
ordinary state that his peculiar mission to the world was 
revealed. Accompanied by his magnetizer, he made frequent 
excursions about the country, everywhere an object of intense 


944 


A. J. DAYIS. 


curiosity, and everywhere successfully treating the diseased. 
While in a clairvoyant state in August, 1845, he named Dr. 
Lyon, of Bridgeport, Conn., his magnetizer, for the delivery of 
a book which he decided to bring out in the city of New York. 
In obedience to this call Dr. Lyon gave up a re mu n era :ive prac¬ 
tice and joined Mr. Davis and his reporter in New York. The 
clairvoyant immediately proceeded to deliver those famous lec¬ 
tures which were subsequently prepared for the press and given 
to the world in his first volume of publications, entitled “ Na¬ 
ture's Divine Revelations.” A writer who was present during the 
delivery of the lectures which compose that remarkable book, 
thus referred to them: “ During the past year, this uneducated, 
unsophisticated, and amiable young man has been delivering, 
verbally, day by day, a comprehensive, well-planned, and ex¬ 
traordinary book — relating to all the vast questions of the age, 
to the physical sciences, to Nature in all her infinite ramifica¬ 
tions, to Man in his innumerable modes of existence, to God in 
the unfathomable abysses of his Love, Power, and Wisdom. 
No human author, in any department of literature or science, 
has ever electrified mankind to the degree that the eloquent, 
yet simple reasonings, the lofty and sublime disclosures, will, 
that constitute this great compend of universal philosophy. 
Perhaps over four thousand different persons who have wit¬ 
nessed him in his medical examinations, or in his scientific dis¬ 
closures, live to testify to the astonishing exaltation of mind 
possessed by Mr. Davis in his abnormal state.” The work 
proved all that was prophesied of it, and established Mr. Davis* 
unsought fame as a seer. 

In 1847 he became associated with several sincere and able 
friends in a movement to publish a reform paper in the city of 
New York. Accordingly, in due time, the specimen number of 
the “Univerccelum ” appeared. The object of this journal and 
the little organization of earnest werkers connected with it, 
was the diffusion of spiritual truth over the world, and a disin¬ 
terested endeavor to turn the tide of existence into better and 
higher channels. But after struggling a short time against the 
storm of pecuniary embarrassment, the publication was discon¬ 
tinued. Mr. Davis was then urged by his friends to start a 
paper in his own name. For a while he utterly refused to take 


A. J, DAVIS. 


945 


the editorial chair; but at last the “Herald of Progress’’ was 
announced by suitable advertisements and launched upon the 
tioubled waters of journalism in 1800. This was an able and 
outspoken sheet, devoted to the demands of progressive truth, 
pledged to the propagation of the spiritual philosophy, and to 
all existent evils in time-honored systems and institutions. 
This periodical and the organization of his Lyceum societies for 
children, occupied his attention for several years. The paper 
has since been discontinued. The latter years of his life have 
been passed in the retirement of his bookstore on Fourth street, 
Hew York. 

Mr. Davis was married July 1, 1813, to a lady who proved a 
true helpmeet and who graced liis life till her lamented death 
in 1853. On the fifteenth of May, 1355, he w r as united to Mary 
F. Love, his present companion, a lady of recognized literary 
abil.ty 5 and the author of several valued Spiritualistic books. 
The conjugal relations of Mr. Davis have been peculiarly 
happy. 

Ho observations with reference to his writings are necessary. 
His numerous publications (about thirty volumes) speak for 
themselves, and are their own best interpreters. That an indi¬ 
vidual with his limited opportunities of instruction, should suc¬ 
ceed in bringing before the world such a number of books, 
treating upon such a variety of subjects, displaying such a 
range of knowledge, and so distinguished for pure and elevated 
morality, for high and holy principles, and for their sublime 
and consoling truths, still constitutes a phenomenon demanding 
explanation. 

Personally Mr. Davis is marked by an affable and easy 
address., unaffected simplicity of manner, and an equanimity 
and cheerfulness which the most depressing circumstances fail 
to disturb. His sole aim has been to establish the actualizes 
of an after-life, the diffusion of more elevated and spiritualized 
ideas among men, and to lift from the world the blackened 
robes woven in the loom of ignorance and superstition. And 
it is hoped his life may be lengthened by the lease of many 
years for the fulfillment of such a purpose, and that the future 


946 


G. L. IIENDERSON. 


G. L. HENDERSON. 

George Legg Henderson was born in Aberdeenshire, Scot¬ 
land, October 5, 1827. His parents differed in religious belief, 
but after their marriage liis father accepted the maternal faith, 
and in conformity with its requirements was re-baptized. The 
arguments used in the conversion of the father became equally 
effectual in enabling the son to advance to a more solid and 
catholic basis of thought and belief, and all this without “in¬ 
spirational aid.” It came about in this way. His mother 
claimed that her religious belief was the result of prayer under 
guidance of the “Holy Spirit.” To this he would reply,— 
“Your father, George Legg, was a Christian, was he not?” 
“Yps, without a doubt.” “The Holy Spirit answered his pray¬ 
ers and guided him into all truth?” “Undoubtedly: all true 
Christians are guided by the Holy Spirit.” “But,” the son 
would continue, “Your father was born a Presbyterian, and yet 
he has changed ’four times, each time guided by the same Spirit. 
His last change you inherited. But my father inherited the 
Episcopal faith, and yet by prayer, aided by 3 7 ou and the Holy 
Spirit, he has changed twice already. Now, how can I, with 
my ‘carnal reason,’ decide which of all these six (hanges was 
really the work of the Holy Spirit ? ” Such were the methods 
by which the subject of our sketch gradually assumed the 
exercise of his reason, as against mere faith, and, in one of the 
most superstitious countries of Europe, became, while but a 
child, a Freethinker. 

The next step towards his complete mental emancipation was 
a three years’ residence in the city of Aberdeen, with ample 
opportunities for the study of History, Science, and General 
Literature, aided by the wisdom and counsel of a friend to 
whom he is indebted for many of the convictions which have 
ever since been to him a source of pleasure and guide to duty. 

In 1846, he, with his father’s family, emigra'ed to the Uni:ed 
States, add settled in Winnebago County, Illinois, where, for 


G. L. IIENDEItSON. 


947 


three years, they labored incessantly to acquire a free and 
independent home. Mr. Henderson himself labored hard for 
fifty cents a day. He also used to haul the products of the 
farm eighty miles to the then village of Chicago, where wheat L 
in those days often sold for forty cents a bushel. Eight days 
were required for the journey, his nightly slumbers being in¬ 
dulged in under the blue, but often leaky canopy of heaven. 

In 1849 the family moved to Iowa, having bought a tract of 
land now known as Henderson Prairie, in Payette County. This 
they improved with their usual thrift and assiduity. 

When the AVar of the Rebellion broke out, it naturally evoked 
that ancient spirit of loyalty to country and liberty so charac¬ 
teristic of the Scottish people. Three of the Henderson brothers 
— Thomas, AVilliam, and David—joined the Federal Army. 
Thomas was killed at Shiloh. David was severely wounded at 
Fort Donaldson, and lost a leg at the battle of Corinth; after 
which, however, he again took the field, with the rank of 
Colonel. William remained with the army until the close of 
the war, having taken part in over fifty battles and skirmishes, 
unwounded, but with health seriously impaired. George was 
also with the army of the Tennessee during its march to Cor¬ 
inth. There he learned by experience what it cost to save this 
country to Human Freedom. 

At the close of the war he, with his brother William, en¬ 
gaged successfully in the produce and banking business in 
Le Boy, Minnesota. There he remained until 1874, w'hen, at 
great sacrifice, he removed with his family to the City of New 
York, for the noble purpose of carrying out a long contemplated 
and cherished plan for the union of the nationalists of the United 
States. Profoundly impressed with the conviction that Christi¬ 
anity is now nothing if not reactionary, and on the other hand, 
that the anti-Christianity of the day is mostly nothing but neg¬ 
ative and destructive; lie yearned for a constructive and positive 
Religion, based on Modern Science, wdiich should take the place 
of Church and Bible and Christian ordinance. Having noticed 
that the children of Freethinkers are regarded as fish to be 
caught, coaxed, or frightened into the Christian net; that mar¬ 
riages and deaths among Infidels are often solemnized by priests 
and pastors; that much of the dignity and nobility of human 


918 


G. L. HENDERSON. 


nature are lost in the want of the proper culture of those who, 
being free from superstition, fancy they are free from gratitude 
to the past, or even obligation to the present and the future; 
and feeling assured that, as a first scientific step to remedy all 
this, a Religion based on Modern science had to be introduced 
to or inaugurated in the United States, he rented for a term of 
years the buiiding known as “Science Hall,” near the “Cooper 
Institute,” (and otherwise centrally located) in order that a 
“Society of Humanity” may have, in the heart of the Amer¬ 
ican Metropolis, a permanent home and place of meeting, and 
where it may also have the opportunity to devise ways and 
means of perfecting itself and extending its influence over the 
land. In this enterprise Mr. Hendersen has met with able and 
earnest supporters and coadjutors, among whom are Hugh B. 
Brown, T. B. Wakeman, Henry Evans, D. R. Burt, Courtland 
Palmer, Thomas Carn Edwards, and other gentlemen, as well 
as several highly intellectual, refined, and energetic ladies. A 
legal corporation has been effected, and the “Eirst Congrega¬ 
tion of the Society of Humanity, of the City of Hew York” 
commenced its existence with thirty-two members. The Sunday 
meetings are very well attended — the lectures are very instruc¬ 
tive and interesting—and this Infidel Church promises well in 
all its departments. Mr. Henderson, having lectured exten¬ 
sively in the West, was prepared to be one of the chief lecturers 
of the Society, in which role he has admirably acquitted him¬ 
self, besides continuing to be the financial and prudential back¬ 
bone of the whole enterprise. 

Mr. Henderson is an earnest, persistent worker in the ad¬ 
vancement of human freedom and the disenthrallment of the 
race from the rule of superstitious creeds and enslaving dogmas. 
He regards the various systems of religion which have pre¬ 
vailed in the world in past ages as having served their purpose 
and as having formed links in the great chain of evolution 
which is slowly but surely perfecting itself in the physical, in 
the intellectual, and in the moral domains of the Universe. 
The advance that is still to be made in religion and in morals, 
he believes, must be strictly in conformity to the laws of the 
Universe as clearly pointed out by the finger of science, wdiich 
must become the rule of human action. 


ERNESTINE L. ROSE. 


943 


ERNESTINE L. ROSE. 

Among the representative women of the nineteenth century, 
Ernestine Louise Susmond Palowsky Bose deserves a passing 
notice. She was born in Peterkoff Tribunalski, in Poland, on 
the 13th of January, 1810, of Jewish parents. Her father was a 
very learned, virtuous, and rich Babbi, and her education em¬ 
braced a knowledge of the Hebrew language and the Bible. As 
a child she did not love God, because her father, whom she 
worshiped, fasted very severely to please him, and she thought 
that so harsh a being could not be good. When she was older 
she found many things in the Bible she could neither under¬ 
stand nor approve, and therefore became an Infidel. 

At the age of sixteen her father undertook to reduce her to 
the Jewish faith by forcing her to a marriage with one of his 
fellow-worshipers. She wept and knelt at the feet of the man 
to whom she had been pledged, praying him to release her. 
But she was rich and beautiful, and of course he would not 
consent. Then alone she started for the Tribune of Kalish, to 
present her cause. Arrived there she pleaded her cause, and 
gained the victory. She was obliged to relinquish her fortune 
and to leave home. She went to Berlin, where she maintained 
herself in a little room by the sale of a chemical paper to per¬ 
fume apartments, which she had invented. 

In 1829 she was shipwrecked on her way to England, saving 
only her life. Becoming a disciple of Bobert Dale Owen, she 
began to preach his doctrines before numerous audiences. She 
married Mr. Bose and came to New York in 1836. She here 
devoted herself to the cause of anti-slavery, freedom, reason, 
and tolerance. She has been to France several times, and her 
later years have been passed in England. She has faithfully 
fulfilled her duty as an earnest advocate of Bationalism and 
the various Badical Reforms, including the Woman’s Bights 
Movement. She has contributed a great deal toward inspiring 
Americans with respect for intellectual freedom. 


950 


ELLA E. GIBSONo 


ELLA E. CxIBSON. 

Ella. Elvira Gibson was bom in "Winchendon, Mass., May 8, 
1821. When five years of age her parents moved to Eindge, N. 
H. She possessed an active, nervous temperament; she learned 
readily, and w r as at the head of her class in school. Her first 
published articles appeared in the miscellaneous department of 
the “Boston Cultivator,” to which she contributed for several 
years. She commenced school-teaching at the age of fifteen and 
met with decided success in that avocation. In 1848 she was 
compelled to relinquish teaching on account of ill health. 

She was reared by pious parents and was taught to be a 
Christian. She studied the Bible extensively, but after the ill¬ 
ness alluded to, her mental eyes seemed to be opened and her 
faith in the infallibility of that book greatly lessened, and at 
length she became a decided unbeliever. Upon partially recov¬ 
ering her health she decided to enter the lecture field and was 
the first female lecturer who spoke by impulsion , without prepar¬ 
ation and upon subjects selected by the audience. She was also 
the first to improvise poetry on the platform. She claims this 
was not done by spirit aid but through a decided nervous 
organization and natural clairvoyance peculiar to her. She lec¬ 
tured in many of the i>rincipal towns of Massachusetts and in 
Maine in 1857-8. Her lectures were of a decided liberal and 
reformatory character. In 1858 she gave 292 lectures, at one 
time giving twenty-nine lectures in twenty-eight consecutive 
days, and during the same time was also employed in healing 
the sick, magnetically and clairvoyantly. 

When the war of the Bebellion broke out she was in the 
West, lecturing, and she became enthused with the patriotic 
spirit and gave her service in raising funds to establish Sol¬ 
diers’ Aid Societies, under the patronage of Gov. Salomon of 
Wisconsin. During the first N. W. Sanitary Fair held in Chi¬ 
cago she sold 1300 copies of a little book she wrote, entitled 
“The Soldier’s Gift, or the Dangers and Temptations of Army 


ELLA E. GIBSON. 


951 


Life,” giving the proceeds to the Fair. Afterwards 10,000 copies 
of the same were distributed to the soldiers in the army. 

She was connected with the Eighth Wis. Vol. Infantry known 
as the “ Live Eagle Regiment ” from the fact of an eagle 
called “Old Abe” accompanying it for three years of the war. 
She was with the regiment at La Grange, Memphis, Vicksburg, 
and other points. 

In 1864 Gov. Lewis, State Treasurer, L. D. Hastings, Gen. 
Fairchild, subsequently six years Governor of Wisconsin, desir¬ 
ous of giving Miss Gibson a lucrative position recommended 
her as Chaplain, and she was assigned to the First Wis. Vol. 
Artillery, then in camp at Madison. On October 17, she left 
for Washington with one of the Batteries. The regiment was 
stationed at Fort Lyons, Alexandria, Va. Upon the complete 
organization of the regiment she was unanimously elected 
Chaplain and the Colonel confirmed the election. Secretary 
Stanton, however, declined to recognize the mustering on 
account of her sex, not wishing to establish a precedent. 

President Lincoln gave her this testimonial: “This lady 
would be appointed Chaplain of the First Wisconsin Heavy 
Artillery, only that she is a woman. The President has not 
legally anything to do with such a question, but has no objec¬ 
tion to her appointment. — A. Lincoln.” Dated November 10, 
1864. She finally served without being mustered in. Miss Gibson 
having been regularly ordained as a minister by the Religio-Phi- 
losopliical Society of St. Charles, Ill., was competent to serve 
as Chaplain. 

Miss Gibson was married in 1861 and during the war was 
knowm as Mrs. Ella E. G. Hobart. In 1864 she was legally 
tmmarried or divorced according to the laws of Illinois. She 
labored earnestly during the war in promoting temperance, 
giving lectures, etc. While connected with the army she con¬ 
tracted dumb ague , from the effects of which she has never 
recovered. For the last few years her health has been frail. 

She feels an ardent interest in the advancement of Liberalism. 
As an evidence it may here be stated that a conside:able por¬ 
tion of the money which she obtained from the government in 
March, 1S76, for her services in the war she generously placed in 
the hands of the writer of these pages to aid him in his purpose. 


952 


ELMINA D. SLENKER. 


ELMINA D SLENKER. 

Elmina. D. Slenker was born December 23, 1827, in the town 
of La Grange, Duchess County, New York, and, as is so often 
the case with Infidels, her father was a preacher! His name 
was Thomas Drake, and he soon became a “doubting Thomas ” 
too, concerning the truth of the old Christian mythology. 
Brought up a Quaker, and preaching the mild, loving, peace¬ 
able doctrine of that quiet people, he soon began to have too 
much light, and consequently preached more truth than the 
majority of that sect could stand, so they “ expelled ” or 
“turned him out of meeting,” as they could not succeed in 
keeping down the faithful utterances of the Spirit (?). But in 
no wise daunted at this, he soon started a series of free-meet- 
ings at his own house, and made it a general rendezvous for all 
Liberal lecturers that came that way — anti-Slavery, Temper¬ 
ance, Graliamite, Infidel, etc.—thus making the acquaintance 
of Abby Kelley Foster, Henry C. Wright, Parker Pillsbury, 
Ernestine L. Bose, and other notables of that day. 

The children grew up in the Liberal school, prepared to 
accept the truth wherever found. Most of the literature to 
whieh they had access was loaded with piety, so this in a meas¬ 
ure counteracted much of the Liberalism — as printed words 
have great weight even with childish minds — so it was a harder 
fight to throw off the shackles of superstition and come out 
free from it all than one would suppose. Elmina’s mother 
had been a school teacher. She was intelligent and refined, 
and possessed a large fund of that strong good sense, which is 
the best quality a woman can have who has to rear a family in 
such a back country place, and upon the means which only a 
small farm can furnish. 

Elmina was the oldest of six girls. She grew up in an atmos¬ 
phere of debate and argument, for Mr. Drake was fond of fur- 
n shing others with light from his candle, and consequently 
shot flew hot and heavy — especially when some priest or col- 


ELMINA D. SLENEEE. 


953 


porteur favored him with a call. One by one the habits of the 
father were adopted by the daughter as she grew up to under¬ 
stand them, and thus she became an advocate of Temperance, 
Free Soil, Water Cure, Phrenology, Anti-Slavery, Equal Rights, 
and Liberalism, and at last reached the goal of Atheism a little 
in advance of her teacher, as she had less of prejudice and 
early education in theology to overcome. 

At the age of fourteen she began taking notes of passages 
of Scripture which struck her as being objectionable, improb¬ 
able, impossible, absurd, or ridiculous, and in 1866 these were 
worked up into a series of articles for the “Boston Investi¬ 
gator,” and afterwards put up into book form by its publisher, 
Mr. J. P. Mendum. It was a file of old “Investigators” print¬ 
ed while Abner Knee land was editor, that gave the father and 
daughter the first real light of the possibility of a world exist¬ 
ing without a creator. 

At the age of twenty six Elmina began to think seriously 
about selecting a companion for life. Everybody prophesied she 
would be an old maid, for who, said they, would ever marry a 
woman Atheist? She feared this prophecy would be fulfilled, 
as no congenial spirit ever happened to come along. But taking 
fate into her own hands, she put in practice her theories of 
woman’s equality, and made her wants known in the advertis¬ 
ing department of the “Water-Cure Journal.” The notice called 
for one who had a soul a little above mere dollars and cents, 
and a heart willing to love and be loved. This advertisement 
brought in over sixty different replies from all parts of the 
country, from Maine to California; and in selecting from so 
many, she did not pick up the fabled “crooked s ick ” either, 
for Mr. Slenker is, as is too rarely the case, more than her 
“fancy painted him,” and the two have been true sympathiz¬ 
ing companions and co-laborers in the cause of Infidelity, that 
cause which has had her warmest advocacy for over thirty years. 

The marriage ceremony, too, differed from any that had ever 
taken place in that vicinity—a simple cohtract that they took 
each other for man and wife was read in the presence of a few 
friends, and signed by them as witnesses. No promise to “love 
honor, and obey,” because they deemed it wrong to promise 
what they might not always be able to perform, as the affec- 


054 


ELMINA D. SLENKEE. 


tions are not controllable by will-power, and love and honor 
must be won ere they can be given. She has made it her main 
object in life, aside from home duties, to forward the cause of 
Freethouglit. This she calls her life-work, and to this is de¬ 
voted every dollar that can be spared, and every leisure moment 
is spent in talking, writing, and distributing papers, books, and 
tracts. She has been a steady faithful correspondent of nearly 
all the Liberal papers, and written essays upon various reforms 
for the local press —amongst the rest she furnished some fifty 
articles for the “Virginia People,” published at Snowville, her 
present residence. The Editor, after puffing her time after time, 
all at once found out the cream was missing from the milk 
pitcher, and sent her a polite note, that he should be obliged 
to refuse anymore contributions from her pen, “because of the 
studied absence of all reference to Deity in them!” Thus it is 
that her whole life has been in constant warfare with Mrs. 
Grundy and the priests. Always in advance of the age; always 
moving from place to place, and each time having the whole 
country to break in, placate, and win over, has been an up-hill 
job. It is comparatively easy to do a few big things, or endure 
a few great trials, to what it is to carry on a perpetual warfare 
against trifles. 

There is not another lady in America more advanced in the 
positive doctrines of Ereethought than is Mrs. Slenker. She is 
thoroughly emancipated from the effects and influence of theo¬ 
logical dogmas and the relics of mythical creeds and supersti¬ 
tions. It is probably more difficult for the female mind to 
become thoroughly divested of the reverential and worshipful 
incentive than for males. It is a part of woman’s nature to 
revere her ideal of heroism and excellence, and to adore a 
being, real or imaginary, that she regards as superior to her¬ 
self. This is undoubtedly the reason why women are more 
worshipful and more religious than men. Being weaker in 
physical constitution and dependent in many respects upon the 
opposite sex, the worshipful, loving element in their nature is 
readily accounted for. It is easy for Christna, Buddha, Jesus, and 
Mohammed to become objects of worship to the female mind. 
It is largely female influence that sustains Christianity and 
priestcraft to-day. Mrs. Slenker is singularly free from all this. 


BUECHNEE. 


955 


BUECHNER 


Frederick Charles Christian Louis Buechner was born in 
Darmstadt, Germany, March 29, 1824. In his youth he studied 
Medicine at the University of Giessen. The prevalent tendency 
of the time was the study of the Natural Sciences; and eminent 
professors, such as Liebig, Yogt, etc., gave the impulse to adopt 
the results of modern scientific researches, wherever they should 
lead, and to judge Religion and all other institutions of modern 
life by the common-sense method. Buechner is, par excellence , 
the exponent of this tendency of his time, and his famous book 
“Force and Matter,” which appeared in 1855, created a great 
impression, and speedily ran through several editions, and was 
translated into several languages. He is extremely materialistic 
and atheistic, and his book is a singular mixture of scientific 
facts and metaphysical dogmas. 

On account of his peculiar ideas Buechner had to leave the 
University of Tubingen, where lie was a Privat-Docent. He 
then settled as a physician in Darmstadt, where he still lives. 

The success of his first work can be easily understood. The 
time was ripe. The book appeared at the right moment. And 
although nothing but a compilation of the scientific researches 
of the most advanced thinkers of his time, and containing 
hardly a single idea of his own, still it was written in a very 
fine and yet popular style, and apparently formed a compre¬ 
hensive philosophy of the Universe which was in itself the 
highest attack on all existing philosophies and religions, and 
therefore his opponents were legion, and the advertisement of 
his book was immense. 

He is one of the many popular champions of Freethought. 
He has lectured in Europe and America on his favorite themes. 
His other works: “Materialism,” and “Man; Present and 
Future,” etc., are in keeping with “Force and Matter.” His 
lectures on Physiology and Darwinism are exceedingly interest¬ 
ing and instructive. 


950 


T. L. STRANGE. 


i 


T. L. STRANGE. 

It seems but just that in this collection notice should be 
taken of the case of the eminent Judge T. L. Strange who was 
sent out by the home government of England as Judge to 
Madras, in India. He was a man of education and culture and 
withal a zealous Christian —so zealous, in fact that, when in the 
exercise of his loyal function he sentenced a Hindoo criminal 
to death he very frequently improved the time between the sen¬ 
tence and the execution in endeavors to bring the condemned 
prisoner “to Jesus.” A curious result followed these well-meant 
exertions. Instead of his converting the prisoners, it turns out 
they actually converted him, and so radical and thorough was 
this conversion that he has now published a book to announce 
his rejection of Christianity and his acceptance of Buddhism. He 
lucidly explains the grounds of his apostasy. He does not 
mince the matter at all, and asserts boldly that it is very doubt¬ 
ful whether Jesus of Nazareth ever lived at all, and that if such 
a person ever existed he was simply an obscure Jew, upon whose 
wholly imaginary claims and teachings a religion really based 
upon Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindoo, Greek, Roman and Egyptian 
mythology and dogmas was afterwards founded. He asserts 
that all the early notices of Christianity, even the references to 
it in the younger Pliny’s famous letter and in Suetonius and 
Tacitus, are downright forgeries, made by the monks in the 
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In like manner 
he rejects all the works ascribed to the Christian Fathers before 
A. D. 180; he denies the authenticity of every book in the New 
Testament, and he says that even the four epistles of St. Paul 
are the inventions of forgers, who derived their ideas from 
Hindoo sources. He is still Judge in Madras. 

The case of Judge Strange is not unlike that of Bishop Col- 
enso, who, while translating the Bible into the Zulu tongue, 
with the aid of intelligent natives, became thoroughly convinced 
of the untruthfulness of much of the Bible, and who had the 


T. B. TAYLOR. 


957 


T. B. TAYLOR. 

Rev. T. B. Taylor, A.M., M.D., was born in Harrison County, 
Va., July 25, 1825. He was the youngest of a family of five sons 
and three daughters. His father w r as a very devout Methodist, 
who took more care of his children’s religious profession than 
of their education. However, young Taylor succeeded, despite 
the meagre advantages for education in his neighborhood, in 
acquiring sufficient knowledge of reading, writing, and arith¬ 
metic, to enable him in his seventeenth year to teach a sum¬ 
mer school. 

By teaching and going to school alternately he finally secured 
a respectable education, and became a popular teacher. In 1848 
he became a clergyman in the Methodist church. Upon his 
first year’s trial he proved to be a young man of such fine 
talent, that he was made “senior minister,” and put in charge 
of the most important appointments of his conference. In 1853 
he took “elder’s orders,” and had the degree of A.M. conferred 
on him by the University where he had been prosecuting his 
studies. 

He married, about this time, the daughter of a wealthy 
planter, by whose death Mr. Taylor became heir to a fine 
estate, and eight thousand dollars in slave property. A consci¬ 
entious anti-slavery man, he would neither hold nor sell the 
slaves; but with a few strokes of his pen made them as free as 
himself. 

Later in life Mr. Taylor began to have “doubts and fears,” 
lest after all the doctrines he had been preaching were but a 
delusion, and theology a mere farce and superstition. He began 
to read and investigate the other side of religious views, and 
soon became an utter skeptic respecting the inspiration of the 
Bible, divinity of Christ, endless punishment, etc. Of course 
he was soon arraigned on a charge of “Infidelity,” and ex¬ 
pelled from the ministry and membership of the church. 

He next turned his attention to the profession of law. He 
was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of Illinois under 


958 


T. B. TAYLOR. 


/ 


most flattering circumstances. But after a practice of flve years, 
finding the profession uncongenial, he abandoned law for medi¬ 
cine, and entered upon the successful practice of the healing 
art. Besides having successfully mastered three of the learned 
professions, he has written a number of books, and written 
extensively for many papers and magazines. During his later 
years he has become widely known as a popular lecturer, and 
as such has received flattering notices from the press. 

After long and patient investigation of the phenomena of 
Spiritualism, he became convinced, like Professors Hare, Wal¬ 
lace, Yarley, Crookes, and scores of others of the savans in 
Europe and America, that they were sufficient to establish the 
fact of man’s existence beyond the grave/; and during the later 
years of his life he has been an able and earnest advocate of 
the Spiritualistic philosophy. 

Dr. Taylor stands high among the most radical of Free Re¬ 
ligionists and Spiritualists. As to his theological views at the 
present time, we are authorized to say, that he does not accept 
of a single proposition in the whole line of dogmatic theology, 
from the God-idea down to the most unimportant point in the 
catalogue; but with Tyndall and the leading thinkers of the 
day, he is a worshiper at the shrine of Nature, Philosophy and 
Science. He avers that he never knew what unalloyed happi¬ 
ness was, until he rid himself of every vestige of superstition: 
and that this can only be attained by an utter rejection of all 
the claims of theology and its attendant errors. The Doctor 
is a genial gentleman of modest and quiet demeanor, both in 
private life and upon the platform. Among his numerous Chris¬ 
tian antagonists none have dared to lisp a word against his 
moral character. 

In thrusting out such men as Dr. Taylor, the Church is fast 
throwing away its brains —putting out its eyes. For every one 
thus exiled, the Infidels will rejoice. Every one so driven out 
is a recruit to the army of progress. Let the Church cling to 
the ignorant, the superstitious, and the bigoted; the Infidels 
will gladly welcome all the skeptics and scientists, the sages 
and thinkers. 


A. L. CERVANTES. 


959 


A. L. CERVANTES. 

A. Leon Cervantes was born in the city of Queretaro, Mex¬ 
ico, April 11, 1826. His father died when he was three 3 ^ars of 
age, and his mother, when he was seven. Thus early an orphan 
he was left to the care of his pious uncle who wished him edu¬ 
cated for the Church. With this view he was sent when six¬ 
teen years of age to college at Guadalajara in the state of 
Jalisco,—a councilian seminary where only young men are 
educated who are designed for the priesthood. His studies were 
Latin, philosophy, etc., for four years, and during his last year in 
college the Bib'e was added to the theological course as is the 
rule with those designed for the priestly office. As he advanced 
in his studies certain doctrinal points troubled him and were 
difficult for him to understand. Not unfrequently, while in his 
class he appealed to the reverend teacher to clear up some 
knotty point about God, the devil or some other mystery con¬ 
nected with his theological studies. The priest who was his 
teacher often found it difficult to answer the questions young 
Cervantes propounded to him, and on one occasion instead of 
answering his inquiry he petulently ordered him to his own 
room where in a subsequent interview Cervantes was told that 
the Bible was not intended for the masses, and it was not nec¬ 
essary they should understand it; it was for the clergy, and 
such points as could not be clearly understood were to be 
passed over. Cervantes was further plainly told that he must 
not raise any more questions in the class affecting the truthful¬ 
ness or reasonableness of the Bible and that if he offended 
in that way again he would be dismissed from the College. 

The young student was honest in his search; he was perfectly 
willing to be a priest, but he wished to know that he had 
embraced the truth and that he would be able to instruct others 
in it. The more he studied the Bible the more skeptical he 
became and this increased until the night previous to the day 
of his examination and when he would be required to “take 


960 


A. L. CERVANTES. 


orders.” So much was he opposed to becoming a priest in a 
system of theology which he could not believe, that on that 
night, hatless and coatless, he left the college stealthily, and 
repaired to the house of a friend hard by. After a few days he 
repaired to the city of Morelia, where he remained two years 
and perfected his studies in triognometry, geometry, pneumatics, 
etc., during this time he became possessed of the works of 
D’HolBach, Yoltaire, Kousseau, Paine, and Buffon, which he 
read with avidity and which ripened his skepticism into con¬ 
firmed Infidelity. He then passed one-and-a-half years at the 
College of St. Charles in the City of Mexico where he studied 
French and other languages and taught the lower classes. 

Leaving college he removed to Southern Mexico and engaged 
in teaching. He subsequently procured a set of instruments and 
followed land surveying, until hearing about the fortunes that 
were made in California he decided to remove there. A Dr. 
Morens bore him company to San Francisco. Cervantes was 
delicate and unused to manual labor, and succeeded indiffer¬ 
ently in the mines. This fact, with his getting badly poisoned 
with poison oak decided him to return to San Francisco with 
the nine ounces of gold he had secured. He there made the 
acquaintance of a wealthy French merchant with whom he 
engaged at a handsome salary as book-keeper and private sec¬ 
retary. Everything moved pleasantly until the devout Catholic 
merchant learned that Cervantes was an Infidel, when, though 
he was well pleased with him otherwise, he discharged him. 

He next settled in Monterey county where he employed him¬ 
self at buying cattle and selling goods, and where he also 
bought landed property. He married a Spanish lady who was 
a firm Catholic at first but has since embraced the views of 
her husband. They have five children. They removed to San 
Luis Obispo where for several years he has been public land 
surveyor. He has a fine ranch of 250 acres with the comforts 
of life around him. 

In the summer of 1876 Mr. Cervantes visited the Eastern 
States and while in New York purchased a quantity of type, 
two printing presses and a regular outfit for printing with the 
view of publishing a Spanish Liberal Paper for the enlighten¬ 
ment of his countrymen who cannot read English. 


WILLIAM M’DONNELL. 


961 


WM. M’DONNELL. 

The author of “Exeter Hall” and “The Heathens of the 
Heath” first saw the light in the City of Cork, Ireland, rather 
more than fifty years ago. His parents belonged to the respect¬ 
able class, and designed their son for the Church, and sent him 
to a classical school where his aptitude for learning soon man¬ 
ifested itself in a noticeable degree. He remained at this insti¬ 
tution until his English education was well advanced. It was 
then intended to send him to Spain to take additional courses 
in theological tuition, and with this view he was placed under 
a learned Spanish tutor. He had become proficient in the 
Spanish language and was about ready to leave for the conti¬ 
nent, when he had the misforlime to lose his mother, whereby 
his projected journey was indefinitely deferred. Not long after 
this his father decided to emigrate to America. In the year 
1830 the father and his three children arrived in Canada, and 
settled on what was called “ The Plains,” near where Peterboro 
is located. Here young McDonnell continued his studies nearly 
two years, when his father, whose circumstances had become 
embarrassed and who had in the meantime married again, re¬ 
solved to return to Ireland, his American home having become 
distasteful to him. Before, however, he reached his native shore, 
a sudden illness closed his life, whereby young McDonnell, 
who had remained behind in this country, was left without a 
friend and in almost a penniless condition. The young man, 
however, was brave and energetic, and resolved at once to 
strike out for himself. From his intelligence and prepossessing 
manners he soon made friends and obtained a position in the 
Post Office, which he filled with marked integrity. 

He resided in Peterboro some eight years, when he was 
induced to try his fortunes in the young village of Lindsay, on 
the banks of the Scugog river, in the depths of the forest, thirty 
miles north of Peterboro, near what are termed the Back 
Lakes. Here he invested his slender means in a manufacturing 


9G2 


WILLIAM M’DONNELL. 


and mercantile business, which, though inconsiderable at first, 
gradually extended itself until he acquired a comfortable com¬ 
petence. The government at length becoming aware of his 
worth, assigned him a prominent position in the militia, and 
also appointed him as magistrate, which position he held for 
many years. He was also elected mayor of the young city in 
which he lives. 

Besides other duties he found time to contribute to the press, 
and some of his poems attracted attention on the other side of 
the Atlantic. At this time he was a prominent member of a 
Protestant Church, and for a considerable time was chairman 
of the Bible Society. By a course of reading advanced Liberal 
works, with not a little close thinking, he gradually lost faith 
in the system of myths and superstitions, and ere long evolved 
into a confirmed Radical. 

“Exeter Hall,” his great theological romance, he published 
some eight years ago, and several thousand copies were soon 
sold. It was read with great pleasure by the numerous class of 
Liberals into whose hands it fell. It contains, in addition to 
its pleasing romance, such an array of facts and authorities 
touching theological subjects, as carry conviction to the candid 
mind. 

“The Heathens of the Heath,” a romance of five hundred 
pages — Mr. McDonnell’s second large work — was published by 
the writer of these pages in 1874. In character and aim it re¬ 
sembles its predecessor. It is rich in romantic, and pathetic 
incident, and exhibits in a convincing manner the terrible atro¬ 
cities which the Church has committed. It shows that the 
greatest morality exists without the Bible and that many of the 
heathen philosophers were lovers of virtue. On the other hand 
the hypocrisy and bigotry of the Church is made very appar¬ 
ent. The romance it contains is pleasing to the reader. An 
able critic speaking of the work, says: “On the whole, it is 
the work of a master hand, a work of unaffected beauty and 
deepest interest.” It has met with a fair sale and has given 
very general satisfaction to its numerous readers. Mr. McDon¬ 
nell is at present engaged upon his third work, which in due 
time will doubtless make its ax^pearance and be kindly greeted 
by his numerous friends. 


J. W, PIKE. 


963 


J. w. PIKE. 


J. W. Pike was born in Concord, Lake County, Ohio, June 
27, 1828. He is the oldest of a family of nine children, and his 
earlier recollections are those of pioneer discomfort, privation, 
and suffering. 

From the age of ten to fifteen he saw much of “revivals of 
religion.” At the age of eleven he began to doubt the reality 
of their stock-in-trade, to wit: heaven, hell, angels, devils, etc., 
which were much more extensively dealt in then than now. 
But since he became familiar with physical science, he became 
convinced that the beliefs in these non-realities and the emo¬ 
tions they excite may and ought to become objects of scientific 
study. During the Presidential campaign of I860 he did his 
“level best” in many a school fight for “Tippecanoe and 
Tyler too,” and in 1845 he delivered a Fourth of July “Aboli¬ 
tionist ” oration which brought him to grief, caused him to 
leave school, where his progress had been rapid, and to apply 
himself to a trade. He worked at house-painting until 1852, 
when he went to California, where he learned surveying and 
assaying, and became an enthusiast in Geology. Ship-starva¬ 
tion, Panama and other fevers, with several accidents which 
came near proving fatal made his trip to and sojourn in Cali¬ 
fornia far from pleasant. He returned to Ohio in 1856, and was 
married on Paine’s birth day (January 29,) of that year. 

He now devoted himself to the study of “Natural Science”— 
Chemistry occupying much of his time. The painting of the 
panoramic charts of Chemistry, and especially of Geology 
became his ambition. His first work in this line, in which his 
wife also took a very active and important part, were a complete 
set of Geological, Palaeontological, and Ethological paintings 
for Professor William Denton. But the war, personal losses, 
and the general financial distress obliged him to go into the 
manufacture of cheese-boxes, which he thoroughly revolution¬ 
ized by the use of improved machinery of his own invention. 


964 


J. W. PIKE. 


For twelve years lie worked at this, far beyond liis strength, 
and with great success. But his health gradually gave way. 
In 1862 he was horribly burnt by a blasting-powder explosion, 
which told severely on his strength and powers of endurance. 
During the summer of 1864 he was in the "United States Service, 
and a typhoid fever during the autumn of that year still further 
undermined his constitution. The command to which he 
belonged was cut to pieces and made prisoners at the fight of 
Keller's Bridge, Kentucky, but next day was rescued by the 
Union forces. 

In 1867 he was “ called out ” by the managers of a “ Revival,’* 
and a debate with clergymen, and the publication of a pamph¬ 
let— “My Religious Experience, and what I found in the 
Bible” was the consequence. From this time his studies car¬ 
ried on after the “Scientific Method” were very materially 
directed towards Biblical and Theological questions, and espec¬ 
ially towards the origin, character, and influence of the Chris¬ 
tian Faith. But his “ Liberal ” friends have not given him 
much encouragement in the prosecution of these studies. 

From 1867 to 1871 he lectured a great part of the time 
on religious and scientific subjects, giving great satisfaction. 

In 1873 he settled in Yineland, New Jersey, and resumed his 
studies in Theology and Church History, etc. In the fall of 
that year he started on a lecturing tour, but his health failed 
and he was obliged to stop for the winter. In the winters of 
1874-5 and 1875-6 he was more successful, and during the last of 
these winters he labored almost nightly for months together, 
popularizing Natural Science. 

He studies religious subjects now only as he has leisure. 
Geology is his chief topic, though at times he lectures on Man 
— his languages, arts, governmental and religious institutions, 
etc. As a disputant on the religious questions ho claims to have 
always been working for the truth, not for victory; and as an 
opponent of Spiritualism and Free Love and what he regards as 
other delusions he claims to be courteous and fair and not by 
any means retrogressive, though he is denounced by many 
leading Liberals as a “Pharisee,” a “bigot,” etc. But it is 
only fair that his friends should suspend judgment until they 
shall have heard his side of the story. 


i 


GERALD MASSEY. 


96* 


GERALD MASSEY. 

Some twenty-live years ago the editor of the “Athenaeum,” 
while walking down one of the narrow lanes of London on a 
summer morning, cast his eye (as was his wont) into a fruit 
shop, and was attracted by the title of a new song. He stepped 
in, and after glancing over it, bought a copy. 

The title of this song was “The People’s Advent,” a song 
which, if he had written nothing else, would have rendered ite 
author immortal. It has been read, and recited, and sung all 
over the civilized world, and has found an echo in the hearts 
of millions of brave, true-hearted thinkers and workers. 

It was a brave song. Ah! over-bold for its time, but it was 
freighted with truth prophetic, and in spite of kingcraft and 
priestcraft, despite the fact that it was born in the brain of a 
plebeian boy, an unknown haberdasher’s clerk, it survived and 
will survive when kings and priests and plebeians are numbered 
with the things that were. For 

’Tis coming sure — the glorious time, 

Foretold by seers and sung in story, 

For which, when thinking was a crime, 

Souls waft to heaven from scaffolds gory. 

A year later this same editor sat in his sanctum amid a wil¬ 
derness of books, fresh from the binder, awaiting his verdict. 
A visitor enters, a beardless youth of delicate frame, but large 
brain and thoughtful face. He trembles visibly as he approaches 
this renowned critic and offers him a small, cheaply-bound vol¬ 
ume, and his voice was scarcely audible as he said, “This is my 
first book, and I hope you will be good enough to look at it 
and make some mention of it.” 

The young man retired, and the editor upon the point of 
whose pen hung the fate of young authors in those days, 
opened the tiny volume and glanced at the title-page, “ Poems, 
by Gerald Massey.” 


96S 


GERALD MASSEY. 


Why, that is the name of the author of the “ People’s Ad¬ 
vent.” 

He cuts the leaves and devours the little book, then grasping 
his eagle’s quill, he pens a brilliant review. 

A week passes; no sale for the new book, although the 
author had threaded the streets of London in search of sub¬ 
scribers for it day after day. He returns at noon one day, 
discouraged, and, dropping into a chair, he said to his pub¬ 
lisher, “It’s no use trying, my book won’t sell.” 

The desponding words had scarcely been uttered when a 
bookseller entered and enquired for a new book of poems by 
Gerald Massey, saying, “There has been a dozen calls for it 
this morning.” While his order was being filled, others came 
on the same errand, and before the sun went down on that 
memorable day, the edition had been exhausted. The aston¬ 
ished young author understood the cause of this wonderful 
change of fortune when he read the review of his book in the 
“Athenaeum ” for that week. 

This account is from the lips of the chief actor, now known, 
the world over, by the proud title of the “People’s Poet.” 

Gerald Massey was born in the village of Tring, County of 
Hertsford, England, in May, 1828 . His parents were jfiebeians 
of the lowest grade above the pauper class, his father being a 
canal-boat driver for about fifty years on an average “ wage ” 
of less than seven shillings a week. 

Neither the father nor mother of Gerald Massey could read, 
and books were unknown in the miserable hut that sheltered 
his infancy and early boyhood, nor would they have been of 
much use there, for as soon as old enough to earn a penny a 
day, the children were obliged to work in the silk mill from 
five in the morning till seven in the evening winter and 
summer. 

When he was ten years of age the silk mill burned down, 
and while out of work for a few weeks Gerald attended a penny 
school, where he learned to read. This opened a new world to 
him. He read all the books in the village and then ran away 
to London at the age of fifteen. 

Here he was errand-boy, shop-boy, clerk, etc., till he reach¬ 
ed manhood, during which time he read all the books he could 


GERALD MASSEY. 


967 


buy or borrow, and without any of the o.dinary educational 
advantages, became an educated, a learned man. 

He began to write poetry for the “Spirit of Freedom,” a 
workingman’s journal, before he was twenty years old, and he 
has been a prolific writer, both of poetry and prose, for the last 
twenty-eight years. He read Paine, Yoltaire, and Hume when 
but a boy, and at once became a Freethinker, and although his 
early poems are chiefly political, they are full of passages of 
which this is a specimen: 

Out of the light, ye priests, nor fling 
Your dark, cold shadows on us longer; 

Aside! thou world-wide curse called king, 

The people’s step is quicker, stronger. 

For a number of years past Gerald Massey has given him¬ 
self up to lecturing, in which he has been quite successful. 
His range of subjects is wide, but his favorite theory is Spirit¬ 
ualism, he having become — some years since — a firm believer 
in this new faith. He visited America in 1873, making the tour 
of the continent and lecturing in the chief cities, beginning in 
New York and closing in San Francisco. 

Gerald Massey is a warm-hearted, genial man, and as a 
companion and friend he has few superiors. His interests and 
incentives are decidedly in the direction of Science and Ration¬ 
alism. He has many years been freed from the binding and 
blinding effects of theological creeds and obligations. He re¬ 
gards priestcraft as one of the great evils which mankind for 
thousands of years have been compelled to endure and support; 
and he regards it as one of the most important works that men 
of the present time can engage in to demolish the idols of the 
past dark ages; to liberate the mind from the dwarfing and 
blighting effect of pagan and Christian mythology, and to dis¬ 
pense with the officious and expensive services of a designing, 
useless, aristocratic and wily priesthood. He most desires to 
see the human race advance in knowledge and truth and men¬ 
tal freedom, which science and philosophy imparts to the dili¬ 
gent investigator. He believes ignorance to be the Devil, Sci¬ 
ence the Savior of the world. 


968 


E. B. FOOTE. 


EDWARD BLISS FOOTE. 

Of the living, active workers and thinkers of the day, the 
author of “ Medical Common Sense ” and other advanced 
works, stands deservedly prominent. Mr. Foote was born on 
the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio, in 1829. His father, 
a strict Presbyterian from the then Blue State of Connecticut, 
was a pioneer settler of the “Buckeye State,” and was the first 
to introduce book-binding and the teaching of sacred music in 
Cleveland, when that now beautiful city was hardly a village. 
For twenty years or more he led the church choir, etc. The 
family library consisted mainly of “Scott’s Commentaries” and 
the best works then extant on Christianity. 

With orthodox surroundings, it is not at all strange that the 
subject of our sketch was early and profoundly impressed with 
the doctrines of the strictest ecclesiasticism. Before his twelfth 
year, in the absence of any rolling tide of religious emotion 
consequent upon revival preaching to carry him into the bosom 
of the Church, he became a devout member. Before reaching 
the age of sixteen young Foote entered a printing office, taking 
the lowest round of Franklin’s ladder to fame, the position of 
“ Printer’s Devil.” Brought in daily contact with the literature 
of the world rather than the limited family library of almost 
wholly Orthodox Christian works, he gradually drifted away 
from the faith of his fathers and became a Materialist of that 
character which cannot accept of belief in immortality with¬ 
out sufficient evidence to satisfy the reason. Soon after his 
twentieth year we find him the editor of an enterprising weekly 
paper in the State from which the paternal root originated, at 
a time when the Stratford (Conn.) spirit-knockings w’ere rap¬ 
ping away at the doors of so-called “ skeptics.” Without accept¬ 
ing them as evidences of spiritual existence and power, our 
moral hero battled with those journals which seemed disposed 
to treat them with ridicule, and with the same liberal spirit 
which he has ever exhibited in his candid search after truth, 
whether religious or scientific, he demanded serious iavestiga- 


E. B. FOOTE, 


969 


tion instead of sneering and unreasoning denunciation. With¬ 
out having ever, up to this writing, become fully convinced of 
the truth of Spiritualism, the doctor has never failed to treat 
with courteous respect those who are honest believers therein. 
Indeed, his respect for all religious believers or non-believers 
of every sect and shade of opinions, from the Catholic to the 
followers of Voltaire and Thomas Paine, if they be but sincere, is 
outspoken and deferential. He considers the human mind as 
too finite for any one to set himself up as final authority, and 
chief-justice of cotemporaneous opinion. But he regards it no 
impertinence to interrogate, or to be interrogated as to the 
foundations of any asserted faith or belief. In view of his early 
training it is not perhaps strange that the warp of his advanced 
thoughts is often woven with reverential threads for apostolic 
authority and teaching. 

Before his twenty-fifth year Foote became the trusted medi¬ 
cal assistant and private Secretary of a noted botanical special¬ 
ist, alternating however between medical labors and editorial 
work on a Brooklyn Daily paper with which he was at that 
time connected. Deciding finally “bo adopt the practice of 
medicine he entered assiduously upon a course of medical study 
and was graduated by Penn Medical University. In 1857-8 he 
issued his famous “Medical Common Sense,” which touched 
the popular heart much as Paine’s “Common Sense” did when 
it was issued. His friends said that it was ten years ahead of 
the age and urgently advised him not to publish it; but with 
pluck, backed up by strong conscientious convictions, their coun¬ 
sels were disregarded and the work appeared, reaching in the 
course of a few years a circulation exceeding two hundred and 
fifty thousand copies. Its characteristic features were —an 
utter disregard of the teachings of existing medical schools and 
text books, reducing to three principal sources the primary ori¬ 
gin of disease, and the fearless presentation of facts and theo¬ 
ries upon those tabooed subjects which relate to the sexual 
relations. In this last named field which had become over¬ 
grown with ascetic and ecclesiastical weeds, he applied a keen 
edged sickle well whetted with the philosopher’s stone. The poet 
N. P. Willis in a letter to the author told him that his “ Medi¬ 
cal Common Sense ” was “ wisdom cut and dried.” 


970 


E. B. FOOTE. 


In 1866 the stereotype plates of “Common Sense” having 
become so worn as to produce an imperfectly printed book, the 
Doctor commenced a revision, which in consequence of various 
interruptions was not completed until the winter of 1869-70. 
One of these interruptions w T as attended with an incident which 
is worthy of mention here. Foote was made the president of 
an oil company in which he was pecuniarily interested and 
visited West Virginia to look after the interests of the com¬ 
pany. The country was new, roads impassible for wheeled 
vehicles and the doctor was day after day in his saddle. This 
life seemed to agree with him and he very nearly decided to 
remain and attend personally to the development of the com¬ 
pany’s property. But the very night after this decision was 
partially reached he had a peculiar mental monition of an 
indescribable character which decided him to return to his book. 

When the work was ready the friends of the author again 
shook their conservative heads and pronounced it “fifty years 
ahead of the age.” But it came forth with the title of “Plain 
Home Talk, embracing Medical Common Sense,” and has rap¬ 
idly reached in this country a circulation of one hundred thou¬ 
sand copies, and in Germany where it was translated into the 
German language, a further sale of about ten thousand copies. 
This for a work of nearly a thousand pages at the cost of 
three dollars and twenty-five cents per copy is noteworthy. 
The new book contained all the principal features of its prede¬ 
cessor with still more outspoken sentiments on the sexual ques¬ 
tion. With the skill of a surgeon and the keen blade of the 
scalpel it dissects to the bone nearly all our social usages and 
lays open the rotten places to the inspection of our candid 
moralists. It conclusively shows that the marriage institution 
sprang up with civilization and that it was the Church which 
captured it and gave to it the name of “a divine institution.” 
The author seeks to divorce it from Church and ecclesiastical 
influences altogether and place it where, without offense to any¬ 
body it may be improved by those whose scientific researches 
qualify them to remodel a time-honored institution, and so 
shape it as to best promote the happiness of the living and 
the perfection of those who must necessarily be concerned in 
either connubial concord or discord. Pre-natal influences are 


E. B. FOOTE. 


S71 


considered and the fact pressed upon the attention of the reader, 
that if we would perfect humanity we must depend upon gener¬ 
ation rather than what is called “regeneration.” 

In 1875 Dr. Foote completed a serial of five volumes entitled 
“Science and Story.” This work blends the principal facts of 
anatomy, physiology and hygiene with the most ludicrous and 
stirring incidents of a comic story, and in the last volume on 
“Elimination and Reproduction,” the doctor again brings to 
the front his favorite topic relating to the improving of human¬ 
ity through scientific methods. Several tracts have also appeared 
from the same vigorous pen upon this important subject, and 
with all the fresh ideas which have eminated from Dr. Foote 
we are pleased to enroll him among “The World’s Sages, Infi¬ 
dels, and Thinkers.” 

It may be well to here call attention to the pitiful persecu¬ 
ting attack recently made upon Dr. Foote by the officiousness 
of the insinuating, meddlesome, notorious Anthony Comstock — 
the special agent of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Dr. 
Foote for six years, in connection with his medical works has 
b en publishing a small pamphlet for married people only, giv¬ 
ing instructions of a somewhat delicate but ttrictly scientific 
character containing judicious and legitimate advice. Dr. Foote 
is known to be a Liberal —a non-supporter of the Christian sys¬ 
tem. This was a sufficient reason why Comstock should place 
himself upon his track like an Indian in ambush. Comstock 
accordingly wrote a decoy letter under a false name (Mrs. Sem- 
ler) or caused it to be written and mailed from Chicago, order¬ 
ing one of the small pamphlets, which was promptly sent. 
For this simple and perfectly harmless transaction Dr. Foote, 
upon the oath of Comstock, was, in January, 1876, indicted before 
the United States District Court for sending obscene matter 
through the mail. He was held in $5,000 bail to appear on trial 
at the May term. The trial came off in June before the Chris¬ 
tian judge C. L. Benedict and a Christian jury. The Christian 
Comstock was principal witness. The result was, Dr. Foote was 
found guilty. On the morning of July 11, after the Judge had 
taken many days to consider the case he imposed a fine of 
$3,500 for sending a single innocent pamphlet through the 
mails —one of the greatest legal outrages of modern times. 


972 


T. J. MOORE. 


T. J, MOORE. 


Thomas Jefferson Moore was born in the town of Worthing¬ 
ton, State of Massachusetts, May 4, 1805; is now a resident ol 
Peoria Co., Illinois, where he has lived for the last thirty-eight 
years; was born of very religious orthodox parents, (being cIosg 
communion Baptists); was brought up “at the feet of Gamaliel,” 
so far as severe religious training was concerned; was converted 
in 1820 in one of the earliest traveling revivals, was baptized, 
(with about twenty of his young schoolmates) and joined the 
Baptist Church, but “fell from grace” (the grace of the church). 

One day he asked his old minister if God always knew who 
would be saved and who lost, and his answer was Yes. He then 
asked another question, viz., “is it possible for any of those to 
be saved that God eternally foreknew would be damned?” and 
received this reply: “Brother Thomas you have been tempted 
by the Devil; we have no business to ask questions of this 
kind; ’tis insulting God, and you must never think of such a 
thing again.” At this bluff, curt reply he seemed to think it 
time to seek a religion that was based on reason, justice, and 
common sense, and bade a farewell to all creed-bound Christian 
churches. He was a co-worker in the early anti-slavery move¬ 
ment in Mass., when Wm. Lloyd Garrison was led through the 
public streets of Boston, in broad day light, with a rope around 
his neck; when the best Christian of the city did not choose, 
or dare to lift a hand to rescue him; but dared hold the rope 
that bound him. He was also a co-worker in the early stages 
of the temperance reformation in Massachusetts and New York, 
in 1831, and onward for ten years with the great leaders, such 
men as Dr. Hewett of Connecticut, E. C. Delavan, and Elisha 
Dayton of New York, and a host of honest, zealous workers in 
the much-needed reform, and lastly, but not least, has been 
a firm and unflinching advocate of woman’s rights for more 
than forty years, and probably wrote and published the first 
essay on that question that ever was written in Illinois. 


ABBY KELLEY. 


973 


ABBY KELLEY. 

This famous Abolitionist lecturer, who, in her time, created 
more of a furore, perhaps, than any other advocate of the cause 
of negro freedom, was the daughter of Quaker parents. She 
was a tall, beautiful girl, with a large, well-shaped head, regu¬ 
lar features, dark hair, blue eyes, and a sweet expressive coun¬ 
tenance. She was also the fortunate possesser of clear moral 
perceptions and deep feeling. Her speeches were always extem¬ 
poraneous, always well delivered, and at times with great elo¬ 
quence and power. She and Angelina Grimke first spoke in the 
women’s meetings, but the men, one by one, asked permission 
to come in, and w T ere actually fascinated; and thus, through 
man’s curiosity, they soon found themselves speaking to pro¬ 
miscuous audiences. 

For a period of thirty years Abby Kelley spoke on the sub¬ 
ject of slavery. “She traveled up and down the length and 
breadth of this land, — alike in winter’s cold and summer’s 
heat, mid scorn, ridicule, violence, and mobs, suffering all kinds 
of persecution, — still speaking, whenever and wherever she 
gained audience, in the open air, in school house, barn, depot, 
church, or public hall, on week day, or Sunday, as she found 
opportunity.” 

She found that the Church was basely false to its trust on 
the great question of human liberty. She was therefore one of 
the first “ Come-Outers ” in this country, and is said to have 
been the author of that very expressive phrase-word. 

In 1845 she married Stephen S. Foster, and soon after they 
purchased a farm near Worcester, Massachusetts, where, with 
an only daughter, she has lived for several years in retirement. 
She 'was obliged to give up lecturing while still young, on 
account of the loss of her voice, brought on by constant and 
severe use. Nobly she did her work, and nobly has it been 
crowned: let her rest on her laurels until the great deliverer, 
Death shall bring her the higher emancipation. 


974 


KERSEY GRAVES. 


KERSEY GRAVES. 

The author of “The Biography of Satan,” and “The World’s 
Sixteen Crucified Saviors” was born of Quaker parentage and 
was reared in the peculiar doctrines of that quiet sect. He was 
early of a studious turn of mind and fond of philosophical and 
scientific investigation and his friends wished him to become a 
preacher in the sect to which his parents belonged, but as none 
are allowed to preach unless they have a “divine call,” and 
observing that some who claimed to have a call from God to 
preach were opposed by others who claimed “to be moved” by 
the same power to oppose their preaching, young Graves’ mind 
became much confused and unsettled respecting the “call” and 
he concluded he had had none. 

When quite a young man he met some works on phrenology 
which he read with avidity and became a convert to that science 
to the extent that he lectured upon the subject, examining heads 
in various towns of the Western States. In persuing this study 
he gradually became an unbeliever in the dogmas of orthodoxy 
and as he saw that men’s minds and actions corresponded to 
the conformations and character of their brain he came to 
think that “divine agency” had but little to do with it. In 
due course of time he developed into a decided Liberal thinker 
and embraced the Spiritualistic philosophy, such facts having 
been brought to his observation as were sufficient to convince 
him of its general truth. 

He ultimately gave a large portion of his time and services 
in the lecture field and advocated the leading reforms of the 
day. His favorite themes were temperance, anti-slavery, anti¬ 
capital-punishment, labor reform, Spiritual philosophy, etc. As 
a speaker he is forcible, logical and earnest. Being favored 
with a retentive memory he easily arranges his facts and 
authorities and spreads them before him like a panorama and 
thus delivers an extemporaneous lecture with the regularity and 
precision of one carefully written; and such was the retentive- 


KERSEY GRAVES. 


975 


ness of his memory that hours after he had rendered a lecture, 
he could repeat it almost word for word and reverse it, begin¬ 
ning at the end and traversing to the beginning. He frequently 
engaged in public debate upon his favorite themes and usually 
acquitted himself with acknowledged ability. 

In 1844 Mr. Graves married Lydia Michener. cousin of Edwin 
M. Stanton, Secretary of War in Lincoln’s Cabinet. By this 
marriage he has two sons and two daughters who are giving 
promise of future usefulness. 

Mr. Graves’ great literary production is, “The World’s Six¬ 
teen Crucified Saviors,” a thorough examination in the history 
o ’ the demi-gods and Saviors the world has had in former ages 
and a complete extinguisher of the claims to originality and 
priority on the part of the Christian Savior. It has met with a 
most flattering reception and very extensive sale, one edition 
following another in rapid succession. Probably no work from 
the Liberal press within twenty-five years has been so largely 
patronized. It hits heavy blows at Christian mythology and 
shows the pagan origin of every dogma it holds to-day. It is 
extremely damaging to the Christian system and carries convic¬ 
tion to the candid reader. 

A single quotation is here given. “Header, look for a mo¬ 
ment at some of the many childish incongruities and lo ical 
difficulties this giant absurdity drags with it. It represents 
Almighty God as coming into the world through the hands of 
a midwife, as passing through the process of gestation and par¬ 
turition. It insults our reason with the idea that the great, 
infinite Jehovah could be moulded into the human form —a 
thought that is shocking to the moral sense, and withering, 
cramping and dwarfing to the intellect, imposing upon it a 
heavy drag-chain which checks its expansion, and forbids its 
onward progress.” 

Mr. Graves is at present engaged in bringing out another 
work, “The Bible of Bibles,” which it is too soon yet to say 
much about. He has also other works projected, all of which 
will doubtless appear in due time. His energy and application 
are equal to the task lie has imposed upon himself. 


976 


E. H. HEYWOOD. 


E. H. HEYWOOD. 

E. H. Heywood was born September 29, 1829. Eeared in the 
strictest school of Calvinistic theology, to emerge into the realms 
of mental light and freedom he had to pass through earnest 
and protracted mental struggles. His Christian faith was early 
shaken by the, perusal of Garrison’s “Liberator,” and Theo¬ 
dore Parker’s inimitable “Discourses on Beligion.” He soon 
became disgusted with the Christian clergy as mediums of 
thought, and the imperfect borrowed system which they promul¬ 
gated. He also became indignant with the equivocal position 
which the clergy occupied toward such reforms as anti-slavery 
and temperance, and the tendency which they exhibit to up¬ 
hold the established institutions and to oppose reforms and 
innovations. When he found the exponents of Christianity 
opposed to progress —“a suspense of faith” —he realized the 
truth of the poet’s maxim, “Nearthe Church is far from God,” 
and he felt forced to separate himself from the Church “ to 
save his soul,” though he had prepared himself for the minis¬ 
try. The right of the mind to dispense with a mediator, with 
“second-hand” truths, and to enjoy original relations with the 
source of thought and being was the main-spring of his princi¬ 
ples and purposes as a reformer. Hence in seeking the aboli¬ 
tion of war, of the speculative property system, of compulsory 
government, and of the current system of marriage, he says 
he “appealed from God’s wife — Mrs. Grundy — and from the 
conventional ox>inions and customs called * laws ’ to the laws of 
Nature,” which he deems to be good enough for him until bet¬ 
ter ones can be found or made. Mr. Heywood graduated at 
Brown University in 1856, and studied as a resident graduate 
two years longer. 

In 1865-6 he called the first meeting and wrote the first draft 
of declaration of sentiments and constitution of the Universal 
Peace Society, which still flourishes and has its headquarters in 
Philadelphia. In 1867 he organized in Worcester, Mass., the first 


E. H, HEYWOOD. 


97? 


Labor Reform League, which ultimately developed into New 
England American Labor Leagues. In 1873 he inaugurated the 
New England Free Love League, the object of which is to 
enable husbands and wives to know each other better, and to 
treat each other truly; in a word, to locate the nuptial knot in 
the hearts and in reason, and not on the house tops as now. 

In May, 1872, Mr. Hey wood issued at Worcester, the first 
number of his monthly paper, ‘‘The Word,” which is still liv¬ 
ing, and earnestly advocates his leading measures on labor 
reform, the abolition of interest, dividends, profits, rents, the 
tyranny of capital, the coercion of governments, the principle 
of oppression, etc. He has it on his programme to organize 
in the near future other cognate movements, one of which 
he designates “The New England Anti-Dealh League,” the 
objects of which will be to abolish Death and bring the theo- 
logic .1 God into court to answer for his bad management of 
human affairs. It will be seen that Mr. Heywood is very 
radical, and much in advance of the ideas which the conserva¬ 
tive class hold, but he is honest, earnest, and sincere. He cares 
not whether a measure is popular or unpopular; if he deems it 
right he advocates it all the same. He is a genial, amiable gen¬ 
tleman who is filled with the “milk of human kindness,” and 
whose great object is to ameliorate the ills and sufferings which 
bear down upon his fellow men, and to remove, so far as in his 
power, the impediments to their prosperity and happines. It 
will be a long time before his views are generally adopted by 
the oppressing aristocratic classes, and it will also be a long 
time before a more earnest, disinterested and self-sacrificing 
worker is found in the field of reform. 

Mr. Heywood is tall and slender of frame, of sharp and 
rather delicate features, of a nervous and flexible temperament, 
animated in style, has a pleasant voice and manner, fluent in 
speech and ready, in debate. 

He has written and published several pamphlets advocating 
with ability the views which he entertains. Over 150,000 of 
these hnve been sold. The titles of some of them are “The 
Labor Party,” “Hard Cash,” “Uncivil Liberty,” “Yours or 
Mine,” “The Good of Evil, “ War Methods of Peace,” “Cupid’s 
Yokes,” etc. 


978 


R. PETERSON. 


R. PETERSON. 


Colonel E. Peterson, editor of “Common Sense,” was born 
in Dublin, Ireland. At the age of twelve years his father sent 
him to New York to learn the mercantile business with an 
uncle who then kept a store on William street. The situation 
becoming unbearable, he ran away and began life on his own 
hook as a newsboy, sleeping under stoops and in crockery 
crates on the docks. One winter night some malicious person 
rolled the large cask in which he was lodging into the river; 
and it was only through the intervention of Jupiter Ammon 
and a long rope let down from a coal-dealer’s office window 
that he was saved from a watery grave. 

After a few months of this sort of life, he emigrated to Ohio, 
where he learned the printing business. Then he went to 
school summers and taught district school winters in Ohio and 
Pennsylvania. Next he concluded to study law; and after read¬ 
ing some years, he went to Paris, Texas, where he now lives, 
and was admitted to the bar. Soon after the war of the Rebel¬ 
lion, he started, and published for several years, the second 
Republican paper in the State. It was not long before he at¬ 
tracted the attention of the Ku Klux; and one night about 
twelve o’clock they surrounded his house to the number of one 
hundred and fifty disguised men, armed with six-shooters, 
knives, and double-barrelled shot guns. They bullied and 
threatened for a while and then rode away. Since the war he 
has held the office of County Clerk, County Judge, and District 
Attorney. 

He is now engaged in the publication of “Common Sense,” 
a Freethought journal, “devoted to the rise of Reason and the 
downfall of Faith.” It is an ultra-radical, spicy little sheet, 
and is the only Liberal paper published in the South. It is a 
valuable auxiliary to the Infidel cause; and its able editor, we- 
are glad to state, has the grit, the means, and love for the 
work, to make “Common Sense” a permanent institution. 


A. L. RAWSON. 


979 


A. L. RAWSON. 

Albert Leighton Lawson was born in Chester, Vermont, in 
1829, and raised in Weedsport, New York. His father, Alpheus 
Cleveland Lawson, a descendant of the famous Secretary Law- 
son of Boston, was a man of good common sense, respected 
for his judgment in business matters, and of decidedly advanced 
ideas and opinions in religion. In science his chief service was 
the introduction of the drug veratrium viride, whose valuable 
properties he was the first to recognize in treating diseases of 
the heart. His idea in the education of his son was that it was 
important to give a right direction to the desire for knowledge, 
and that the conclusions of one well-trained mind was of more 
value than those of a body of men (as a council of a church) 
who were only able 10 agree on a compromise. The son was 
sent to the common and select schools, but was finally (at the 
age of seven) placed under the tuition of Mr. John Bemus, M. 
A., a graduate of Oxford, England, whose hobby was oral and 
blackboard teaching. 

His mother (Elizabeth Armington L.), was a woman of rare 
abilities, having been known as ‘‘The Living Cyclopedia” 
among her friends. Her influence was supreme in molding her 
son’s habits of thought and research. 

He united (by immersion) with the Baptist church at the age 
of twelve years. The pastor, “Elder” James S. Ladd, was a 
man of more than average ability, and had a rare library 
which was freely opened to the young student. The new field 
of research and inquiry was diligently worked, and so rapid 
was liis progress that at the age of fifteen he began to write 
on “The Divine Origin of the Holy Bible,” occasional articles 
for the secular press (the religious press having rejected them), 
and which two years later were xmblished in a volume which 
was reprinted in London. 

His first work in science was in setting up an anatomical 
collection, gathered in various parts of this State and Canada. 
His father gave him a work room, which was about fifty by 


980 


A. L. RAWSON. 


twenty feet, and supplied with tools, such as are used by car¬ 
penters, (a well filled chest) turners, engravers, opticians, gun¬ 
smiths, and many well-selected books. Besides indulging in a 
general use of tools, he made a clock, and began a perpetual 
motion, but abandoned the work with the remark written in 
pencil on the works, “This is a mechanical insanity or absurdity.” 

He translated Virgil’s “Bucolics” and “iEneid,” and at the 
age of sixteen offered them to a publisher, when he learned 
that the work had been done before, and better. This experi¬ 
ence was the turning point in his life. He felt that a year or 
two had been wasted through ignorance, and he decided to 
leave home in search of more copious materials for information. 
His early habits of study had apparently affected his bodily 
health, and it was decided that a foot journey would afford 
relief. This idea was suggested by Mr. John Sawyer, who had 
instructed him in the art of surveying (afterwards supplemented 
by several trips in New England with Mr. Andrews, the optical 
instrument maker of Albany, N. Y.), and was carried out in 
company with Doxtater, an Indian chief, a graduate of Union 
College. They walked to Alabama along the western flank of 
the Alleghanies, returning on the eastern. The result of this 
trip were a collection of geological exhibits, 1,800 varities of 
flowers, many sculls of supposed pre-historic men, and imple¬ 
ments of flint, bone, etc., from the mounds and shell heaps, 
and an essay on “American Archaeology,” Apart of this paper 
was published with illustrations in "Well’s “Phrenological Jour¬ 
nal,” February, 1874. Another journey reached the ancient 
cities of Palenque and Uxmal in Central America, and a third, 
(guided by Hole in the Day) penetrated the Hudson’s Bay 
region as far as Fort Albany on James’ Bay. From there were 
brought 1,700 varities of bird’s eggs and skins, among which 
were several ducks not described in any work in natural history. 
(These were destroyed in the great fire in Chicago.) An account 
of a trip around Lake Superior was published in “Harper’s 
Magazine,” May, 1867. 

His love of athletic games led him to engage in a foot-race 
at Bangor, Maine, in 1849, when he won a five mile race against 
a Penobscot Indian of great reputation for speed. 

His earliest desire was to learn, that he might teach others 


A. L. RAWSON. 


981 


the way to knowledge and enlightenment —the true salvation. 
Influenced by his Sunday-school lessons and early religious 
instructions, he studied for the ministry. In that course new 
light was found which seemed to require a different explana¬ 
tion from any found in books, and he resolved to visit Palestine 
and other parts of the East, and has made four journeys in 
Bible lands. As an instance of his success in different enter¬ 
prises, his visit to the Bedawins, in Moab, is in point. While 
no other traveler has escaped paying tribute in money and 
valuables to that covetous horde of freebooters, he visited them 
several times as an artist, sketched scenery, and painted por¬ 
traits of many of their chiefs and noted women, and was es¬ 
corted royaliy from place to place without one demand for 
backsheesh, and many invitations to come again instead. He 
thinks this treatment was because he advocated fidelity to one’s 
own religious belief, respect to others, instead of denouncing 
the Arabs as heathens and infidels, as most travelers do. 

While in Arabia he wore the costume of the country and 
walked with the guides rather than ride in the dusty train. 
The great Sheikh, Ali Diab Adwan, offered to give him his 
favorite daughter in marriage and adopt him as the “only son 
of the Sheikh,” as a recognition of his “personal presence and 
manly abilities.” The Arabs united in pronouncing him “wor¬ 
thy of being counted one among them,” and voted by acclama¬ 
tion his adoption as an honorary member of his tribe. He is, 
therefore, a Diab (Wolf). 

One of the results of his travels and residence in Palestine 
is the belief that the early history of the Hebrews was invented 
after the Greek invasion of Asia Minor, or about the age as¬ 
signed to the “captivity in Babylon,” the writers using the 
local names of the country as hints for their mythical names, 
and giving those characters histories that embodied certain 
leading ideas in morality and religion. Local traditions were 
extended by Greek and Assyrian literature, and ennobled by 
the infusion of the theocratic idea of government. 

His views on the questions of the day are in harmony w 7 ith 
the great thinkers who have advanced from the fixed opinions 
of the past ages and dared to assert their belief in the imper¬ 
sonality of the Most High. 


982 


A. L. B AW SON. 


He has been honored, both in this country and in Europe, 
by the several honorary degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of 
Divinity, and Doctor of Laws, none of which are used by Mr. 
Rawson, who is intensely democratic in all his instincts. 

Among the books illustrated by his art work, from sketches 
made on his travels, are “The Life of Jesus Christ,” by Henry 
Ward Beecher; “Jesus, His Life and Work,” by Chancellor 
Howard Crosby, D.D.; “Jesus,” by Charles F. Deems, D.D.; 
“Commentaries,” by Daniel D. Whedon, D.D.; “Commenta¬ 
ries,” by Alfred Nevin, D.D.; “Youthful Explorers in Bible 
Lands,” by Robert Morris, LL.D.; “Freemasonry in the Holy 
Land,” by Robert Morris, LL.D.; “Virgil’s 2Eneid.” Ed. by 
Prof. Edward Searing, A.M.; “History of Medford, Mass.,” by 
Edward Brooks; “Heroes and Martyrs,” by Hon. J. T. Headley; 
“Bible Lands Illustrated,” by Rev. H. C. Fish, D.D; “Com¬ 
mentaries,” by Lyman Abbot; “Hand-Book for Sunday Schools 
and Bible Readers;” “Pronouncing Bible Dictionary;” “Com¬ 
prehensive Bible Dictionary;” “Introductory to the Holy 
Bible;” “Bible Dictionary;” “Illustrations in Catholic Bible 
Dictionary;” “Illustrations in Introductory to Holy Bible. 

He has edited a “History of All Religions,” “History of the 
Roman Catholic Church in America,” “History of the Mormon 
Church,” “History of the Quakers,” “Statistics of Protestant¬ 
ism,” “Antiquities of the Orient,” “Introductions to the Holy 
Bible,” “Natural History of Bible Lands,” and several Bible 
dictionaries. These works contain in all over 3,000 illustrations. 

He has now in preparation a work on the Antiquities and 
Explorations in Palestine and other Bible Lands, to include 
the results of all important travels in the East, from the earliest 
to the present, with several hundred illustrations, maps, and 
plans. He has also delivered lectures and published essays on 
“The Historical Confirmation of Bible Text; or, Biblical Ar¬ 
chaeology;” “The Wanderings of a Scribe in the East;” “The 
Mysteries of the Nile; Egypt and the Bible:” “The Moham¬ 
medan Pilgrimage to Meccah;” (from personal experience) 
“Oriental Traditions, Myths, and Opinions in Religion;” 
“American Arcliaeolegy; ” “The Early History of Mankind;” 
“The Attitude of Christianity to Science;” “The Fine Arts 
Applied to Industry;” “The Messiahs, True and False.” 


W. S. BELL. 


983 


W. S. BELL. 


William S. Bell, was born in Allegheny City, Pa., February 
16, 1832. His parents were Methodists and brought him up in 
the same faith. In early manhood William S. formally united 
with the Methodist church and began to preach. In 1853 he 
began to prepare for the ministry. In 1858 was graduated from 
Adrian college, Mich., and soon thereafter began to preach in 
Brooklyn, New York . 

When John Brown made his raid on Harper’s Ferry Mr. 
Bell took occasion to speak of the significance of the event. 
This raised a cry of “Mixing politics with religion.” This was 
atrocious. And before many days he was locked out of his 
Church. This was telling experience, and had much to do with 
the advance he subsequently made in Freethought. 

After several years of uneventful life in the Christian minis¬ 
try he had so far outgrown his faith and zeal for supernatural 
things that he gave up preaching and applied himself one year 
to the study of medicine; but his mind was not at rest here. 

In 1872 he went to Harvard Divinity School to fit himself 
for some Liberal ministry. After two years of study he went out 
candidating among the Unitarian and Universalist congrega¬ 
tions for a pastorate. In 1873 he was engaged by the Universal- 
ists of New Bedford to supply their pulpit indefinitely. It was 
here that the rapid development in Mr. Bell’s mind took place. 
There was in New Bedford an excellent Library from which he 
could take the best and most liberal literature of the day. But 
the study of science is not a healthful exercise for a minister. It 
proved so in the case of Mr. Bell. His sermons were not of 
“the good old fashioned Universalist style.” “If he don’t 
believe in the Bible he might as well quit.” And he did quit. 
In his sermon on the last Sunday, December, 1874 he publicly 
renounced the Christian Cfiurch and all its follies. Since that 
time he has been engaged in lecturing before Liberal societies 
in different parts of the country with very good success. 


984 


MOSES HULL. 


MOSES HULL. 

Moses Hull was born in Delaware County, Ohio, January 16 , 
1835. When four years of age his father moved to Indiana. 
His early schooling was quite limited; indeed, it may be said 
that the most of his education has been picked up since he left 
his father’s roof. His parents were members of the Baptist 
church, as his ancestors had been for generations back. At the 
age of fourteen, Moses became a very devoted member of the 
church of the United Brethren. But some tracts placed in his 
hands soon after, effected a change in his belief; and becoming 
identified with the Adventists, he commenced preaching their 
novel doctrines at the age of seventeen, and soou became 
widely known through the country as the “ Boy Preacher. ” He 
everywhere met with much prejudice and opposition, and cler¬ 
gymen of other denominations frequently attended his meet¬ 
ings for the purpose of silencing him; but the same clergyman 
was never known to make a second effort. 

At the age of twenty the Advent Conference sent him to 
Illinois as a missionary. Here he met with some Seventh-Day 
Adventists, and affiliating with them, was ordained as a minis¬ 
ter, and sent by them as a proselyter through Iowa and Mis¬ 
souri. His brethren furnished him a tent, in which they 
kept him every summer while he remained with them. He 
traveled through nearly all the states of the North and West, 
everywhere throwing out challenges to all of different belief to 
meet him in public discussion. He became known all over the 
country as the champion of Adventism. 

Among his many debates, the most noteworthy was one with 
the renowned Spiritualist, W. F. Jamieson, at Paw Paw, Mich., 
in 1863. It was during this controversy that he became aware 
of his theological errors; and ever true to his own convictions, 
he again changed his belief. This subjected him to the most 
violent persecutions from his Advent associates. 

However unpopular may be some of the doctrines advocated 


MOSES HULL. 


985 


by Mr. Hull, and however ill-judged may be the exemplification 
of them in his life, the public is rapidly becoming convinced 
of the honesty of his convictions and of his rare fidelity to 
principle. His unquestioned talents, forcible logic, and elo¬ 
quence, compels the world to listen to his peculiar views. He 
draws crowds of eager listeners wherever he moves with his 
tent. When a preacher his regular pay was never less than 
twenty-five dollars and often seventy-five dollars per Sunday; 
but since he commenced the advocacy of his liberal and radical 
opinions, he has generally depended on the generosity of his 
audience, never taking any admittance fee. 

In 18G5 he commenced the publication of the “ Progressive 
Age,” which, before the close of the year, he sold to the “Re- 
ligio-Philosophical Society.” Shortly after he commenced the 
publication of “Hull’s Monthly Clarion ” and the “Temperance 
Clarion,” at Milwaukee. In SS68 he issued another magazine, 
entitled the “Spiritual Rostrum.” In the meantime he pub¬ 
lished several pamphlets, which have done more to agitate and 
advance his Spiritualistic and social doctrines than anything 
issued from the press. His trenchant tracts and pamphlets are 
too numerous to receive special notice in this brief outline of 
his career. His “Crucible” was established in 1872. His bro¬ 
ther, Daniel W. Hull, and W. F. Jamieson were connected with 
him in its publication. The paper was suspended about the 
close of the second volume. The Hull brothers afterwards 
decided to re-issue the “Crucible;” and on the 1st of October, 
1874, the first number of Yol. III. appeared. 

His writings are characterized by clearness, logic, a terse 
and trenchant style, and often by severe and scathing sarcasm. 
He has sought to warn the w'orld that old institutions are slid¬ 
ing from under it, and that the time has come when men and 
women cannot longer afford to be untrue. He avows his deter¬ 
mination to continue for life the warfare against what he hon¬ 
estly holds to be the greatest evils that afflict humanity, and 
especially against slavery of every kind. And it is to be hoped 
that he may live to see the day Avhen slavery shall be done 
away, and truth, and right and virtue, shall fill the earth, as 
the waters fill the sea. 


986 


HUDSON TUTTLE. 


HUDSON TUTTLE. 

In 1830 the parents of Hudson Tuttle purchased a tract of 
wood-land in Berlin township, Erie Co., Ohio. They cleared 
and fenced a few acres, and rolled together logs for a house. 
In this log cabin, in 1836, Hudson Tuttle was born. They were 
honest, earnest souls, endowed by nature with rare good sense. 

There was no time nor opportunity for sentiment or dream¬ 
ing in the untamed Ohio wilderness. It was a hard, desperate 
struggle for existence with the forest, wild beasts, and insidi¬ 
ous miasma. 

Hudson was a frail boy, sensitive and reticent. His timidity 
kept him apart from those who came to visit his parents, and 
he never mingled in the sports of the rough and rolicking boys 
of his own age. The result was a life of isolation — of self-de¬ 
pendence. He spent his time with nature — birds, trees, flow¬ 
ers were his teachers. His first term at school was passed in a 
house of unhewn logs; the benches were of the same material 
rough hewn on the upper side. Then a better school-house 
was built, and he had a more comfortable seat. Thence he 
attended what was then called an academy. His attendance 
was interrupted by long intervals of sickness and by the long 
vacations of the early country schools, so that the sum of his 
entire school days does not quite reach fourteen months. 

He had learned something of geography, history, mathemat¬ 
ics, and as he claims wasted six months of this precious time 
on the Latin and Greek grammars. 

At the age of sixteen he became a medium. It is thought 
the angels saw in the tall, bashful boy, the prophet, poet, seer; 
henceforth they were liis teachers, he their patient pupil. 

Beginning with moving of tables and other objects his ine- 
diumsliip rapidly culminated in a high sensitive and impres- 
sional state, in which he always writes and usually speaks. 
There is no mistaking the physiological systems of this intensely 
nervous condition. 


n u d s o :t 


937 


T UTTL E. 

His first work, “Life in the Spheres,” was written and pub¬ 
lished while the medium was still in his teens. While the pub¬ 
lic were reading and wondering over that strange story of the 
Beyond, he was busy with the first volume of the “Arcana of 
Nature.” It was a strange sight, the farmer boy, without 
books or any apparatus, with none of the appliances and aids 
of the schools, composing a work which began with the con¬ 
stitution of the atom and ended with the laws of spirit-life! 
But he trusted to the invisible influence which compelled him 
onward. 

Ho might be weary with physical labor, and sit down to his 
table with aching muscles, when the guides came, he was at 
once refreshed, elastic, happy, and sat and wrote far into the 
night. 

The first volume was published in 1860. The first and second 
editions were soon exhausted. The advanced minds in Germany 
saw in the “Arcana” the solution of the problems for which 
the thinking world had long been looking. The work was at 
once translated into German, and has had a good circulation in 
that country. Buchner in his popular work on “Matter and 
Force,” quotes largely from it. 

In his preface Mr. Tuttle says with characteristic modesty: — 

“ For years I have been led through the paths of Science by 
invisible guides who have manifested the earnest zeal of a 
father for a feeble and truant child. They have upheld my 
faltering footsteps; they have supported my weary frame, and 
in darkest hours thrown their sacred influence around me. 
Like the readers of these pages, I am a student in their portico, 
receiving any mental food from their hands. From these invis¬ 
ible authors I draw the concealing veil, and to them dedicate 
this volume.” 

The daring conception of the work will be understood by 
the most cursory glance at the following “plan” by which it 
was prefaced: — “ i. To show how the Universe was evolved from 
chaos, by established laws inherent in the constitution of mat¬ 
ter. ii. To show how life originated on the globe, and to detail 
its history from its earliest dawn to the beginning of written 
history, hi. To show how the kingdoms, divisions, classes, and 
species of the living world originated by the influence of con- 


983 


HUDSON TUTTLE. 


ditions operating on the primordial elements, iv. To show how 
man originated from the animal world, and to detail the his¬ 
tory of his primitive state, v. To show the origin of mind, and 
how it is governed by fixed laws. vi. To prove man an immor¬ 
tal being, and that his immortal state is controlled by as immu¬ 
table laws as his physical state.” 

How well this grand task was performed, the popularity of 
the work indicates. The ideas it contained of Evolution anti¬ 
dated Darwin by two years, and his ideas of Force were entirely 
in advance of the existing status of thought. 

Speaking of this work and “Origin and Antiquity of Man,” 
the able thinker B. F. Underwood says: — “It is no small credit 
to Mr. Tuttle that these works, written I am #ure more than 
fifteen years ago, contain very little that may be considered 
crude or obsolete to-day, while most of the positions taken and 
views advanced have been confirmed by subsequent discoveries 
and developments.” 

The second volume of the “Arcana” soon followed, and in 
1866 he published “Origin and Antiquity of Man,” a work of 
great merit. In conjunction with his wife, Mr. Tuttle pub¬ 
lished about the same time, “Blossoms of our Spring,” a poet¬ 
ical work, containing, as its title implies, their early poems. 

His next works were, “The Career of the Christ-Idea in 
History,” “Career of the God-Idea in History” and “Career of 
Beligious Ideas: Their Ultimate the Religion of Science,” which 
rapidly followed each other. Soon after he published “The 
Arcana of Spiritualism, a Manual of Spiritual Science and Phi¬ 
losophy,” wherein he condensed the study and the best com¬ 
munications of fifteen years of mediumship. All these works 
have been revised by Mr. Tuttle and are now being issued by 
Mr. James Burns of London, England. 

Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle in 1874 issued a volume of “Stories for 
our Children,” especially designed for the children of Liberal- 
ists, supplying them with mental food free from theological 
dogmatism. Among the many tracts he has written the most 
no.able ate “Revivals, Their Cause and Cure,” and “The Ori¬ 
gin of the Cross and Steeple.” 

On the return of Mr. J. M. Peebles from Europe Mr. Tuttle 
proposed to him to unite in editing a “Year Book of Spiritual- 


HUDSON TUTTLE, 


9S9 


ism.” This volume presents a summary of the philosophy and 
status of Spiritualism for that year which is unequaled, It was 
the design to issue a volume annually, but the difficulties in 
the way of anything like a complete presentation was so great 
the i>roject was abandoned. 

To all this literary labor must be added his editorial duties, 
and continuous contributions to the press, both Reform and 
Secular. For years he has written on an average one review 
each week. These reviews are mercilessly honest, and at times 
are specimens of unequaled sarcasm. He has no pity, or mercy 
for a sham or fraud, and is not content until he has beat it to 
dust and blown it away. 

Mr. Tuttle has never entered the field as an itinerant lec¬ 
turer, yet his leisure time has been fully occupied by calls from 
various societies. He is a calm, logical, scientific thinker, 
impressing his auditors with the earnestness of his convictions. 
His style of speech like his writings, is compact, incisive, con¬ 
densed to the last degree. Hence he requires close attention 
and is more popular with the thinkers than the masses. All 
this literary work has been accomplished outside of the ordi¬ 
nary routine of business. 

He has a productive farm, with orchards and vineyards, to 
which he gives the closest attention, attending to every detail. 

When he entered the field of Reform, he says he knew he 
never should receive renumeration for his labor. In fact it is 
a favorite saying of his that: “Thought should be free, and 
not bought and sold like corn in the market.” “A new thought 
belongs to the world and is no man’s patent.” 

He chose the farm as an empire which should yield him and 
his ample support, and from which he could think and write 
and speak what he regarded as true and no one might interfere. 

He is a child of Nature. She is to him a priestess and law¬ 
giver; her altars are his altars; her many voices, benedictions. 
The fern, flower, tree, grass, insects, birds, are all his teachers; 
from them he learns the living, loving gospel that will help 
humanity heavenward. He is emphatically a type of the new 
order of things; of the true nobility of labor. 

In 1857 Mr. Tuttle was united in marriage to Miss Emma D. 
Rood a lady of rare poetic and artistic talent. It has been said, 


990 


HUDSON TUTTLE. 


“her poetry itself is music.” A great number of her inimitable 
songs have been set to music by eminent composers; among the 
best of which are “The Unseen City,” “My Lost Darling,” 
“Meet us at the Crystal Gate,” “Claribel,” etc. 

Near the close of the conflict which furnishes the theme for 
its changeful and airy narrative she published “Gazelle; a tale 
of the Great Bebellion.” She has continually contributed her 
sparkling poems to all the leading reformatory journals and 
many to the secular press. 

The “Lyceum Guide ” owed much of its value to her genius. 
She is a lady of quiet, dignified manners, self-poised and self 
possessed, with exquisite sensibility, and finest appreciation. 
Home is her paradise and to those who share it with her it is 
really such. TVe read of united lives, of love-linked souls, but 
these happy hearts usually live in the poets’ dream-land. Mr. 
and Mrs. Tuttle actualize most completely this exquisite dream. 
They are bound together by the ties of a common belief, aspi¬ 
ration, desires, pursuits, enjoyments and in the highest, truest 
sense are helpmeets to each other. 

Mr. Tuttle has scarcely reached his fortieth year. Only the 
initial chapter of his biography can yet be written. His has 
been a strange education, one of especial significance to those 
who accept Spiritualism. The full fruitage prophesied will 
form the more interesting concluding chapters. 

A single quotation from Mr. Tuttle will be given: “The 
weapons furnished theology by metaphysics are now useless. 
The war has changed its base. It has been fought on the damp 
marsh-lands, and the combatants have been guided by will-o’- 
the-wisps, which they mistook for stars of heaven. Now the 
light of certain knowledge floods the world, and the systems 
of theology and metaphysics disappear. They can never change 
front and battle with new weapons. Knowledge not only de¬ 
stroys dogmatism; it renders its existence impossible. The 
Goliaths of theology, arrayed on the battle-field of science, be¬ 
come phantasms, the attenuated shadows of ghosts, which 
amuse rather than annoy with their incoherent gibberish. 
Knowledge carries men away from Christianity. The leading 
minds of Europe and America stand outside of its influence.” 


MONCURE D. CONWAY. 


991 


MONCURE D. CONWAY. 

This distinguished Radical clergyman and author was born 
in Stratford County, Virginia, March 17, 1832. He received his 
early education at the Fredericksburgh Academy, afterwards 
entered Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., and graduated in 1840. 

He began the study of law at Warrenton, Va., but abandon¬ 
ed the same to enter the Methodist ministry. He joined tho 
Baltimore Conference in 1850, was appointed to Rockville cir¬ 
cuit, Maryland, and in 1852 to Frederick circuit. 

Having undergone a change of political and religious opin¬ 
ions, he left the Methodist ministry and entered the divinity 
school at Cambridge, Mass., where he graduated in 1854. He 
then returned to Virginia, but was obliged to leave the State 
on account of his political opinions, having become convinced 
of the wrongs of the institution of slavery. The same year he 
became pastor of the Unitarian church in Washington. Some 
anti-slavery discourses, and especially one delivered after the 
assault on Senator Sumner, led to his dismissal, and in 1857 he 
was settled over the Unitarian church in Cincinnati. 

The publication of some books on slavery and its relation to 
the civil war, led to his invitation to lecture on this subject in 
New England, as he had already done in Ohio. During the 
■war his father’s slaves escaped from Virginia, and were taken 
by him to Yellow Springs, Ohio, and settled there. 

In 1863 he went to England and there wrote and lectured on 
the anti-slavery aspects of the war, and contributed to “Fra¬ 
ser’s Magazine ” and the “Fortnightly Review.” Toward the 
end of the year he became minister of South Place chapel, 
Finsbury, and in 1867 of a chaped formed at St. Paul’s Road, 
Camden Town, for evening service only, which posts he still 
occupies. 

Mr. Conway has published “Tracts for To-Day” (1858), “The 
Rejected Stone ” (1861), and “Republican Superstitions ” (1873), 
and a large work of 474 pages, entitled “Sacred Anthology,” 
which has attracted much attention. 


992 


T YLOR. 


T YLOR. 

Edward Barnet Tylor was born at Camberwell, England, 
October 2, 1832, and educated at the school of the Society of 
Friends, Grove House, Tottenham. 

He seems to have made good use of his time as a student, 
especially of Archaeology and Antiquities, for in 1861 he pub¬ 
lished “Anahuacs, or Mexico and the Mexicans;” in 1865 
“ Researches in the Early History of Mankind,” and in 1871 
“ Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythol¬ 
ogy, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom.” 

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1871; and 
received the honorary degree of LL. D. from the University of 
St. Andrews in 1873. 

Towards the conclusion of his “Primitive Culture” Mr. 
Tylor makes use of the following pointed language;—“ Among 
the reasons which retard the progress of religious history in the 
modern world, one of the most conspicuous is this, that so 
many of its approved historians demand from the study of 
mythology always weapons to destroy their adversaries’ struc¬ 
tures, but never tool to clear and trim their own. It is an 
indispensable qualification of the true historian that he shall 
be able to look dispassionately on myth as a natural and regu¬ 
lar product of the human mind, acting on appropriate facts in 
a manner suited to the intellectual state of people producing it, 
and that he shall treat it as an accretion to be deducted from 
professed history, whenever it is recognized by the tests of 
being decidedly against evidence as fact, and at the same time 
clearly explicable as Myth” Let any competent student apply 
this well-defined “qualification of the true historian” to the 
Bible, and he will find out how much residue of history remains 
after extracting all the myth out of it. With reverence it may 
be said that, so depleted, it will bear close resemblance to a 
squeezed orange or a milkless cocoanut. Its myths are by far 
the best part of it, considered as myths: its history is as dry 
as a husk and as untrustworthy as a weather-vane.” 


L E C K Y. 


993 


LECKY. 

W. E. H. Lecky was born in the neighborhood of Dublin, 
Ireland, March 26, 1838, and was educated at Trinity College, 
Dublin, where he took his degree of B. A. in 1859 and M. A. in 
1863. Devoting himself to literature, he soon gained great dis¬ 
tinction as an author. In 1861 he brought out, anonymously, 
“The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,” and republished 
it in 1871-72. In 1865 he published a “History of the Rise and 
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” and in 1869 
a “History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charle¬ 
magne.” The three works have been translated into German, 
and are highly appreciated in the land of patriot work and 
honest criticism. His two later works, especially, stamped Mr. 
Lecky as one of the most accomplished writers and one of the 
most advanced thinkers of the time. They are brimful of cul¬ 
tured Freethought and Infidelity, and generously appreciative 
of these wonderful Modern Times, as against the hey-days of 
either Primitive or Medieval Christianity. We have room but 
for one extract from these scholarly and exhaustive volumes: — 

“ The efforts of self-sacrifice that lead to the beatitude of 
heaven — all of these have now lost their power. Even that 
type of heroic grandeur which the ancient missionary exhibited 
though eulogized and revered, is scarcely reproduced. The 
spirit of self-sacrifice still exists, but it is to be sought in other 
fields —in a boundless philanthropy growing out of affections 
that are common to all religions, and above all in the sphere 
of politics. Liberty and not theology is the enthusiasm of the 
nineteenth century. The very men who would once have been 
conspicuous saints are now conspicuous revolutionists, for while 
their heroism and their disinterestedness are their own, the 
direction these qualities take is determined by the pressure of 
their age.” 

Mr. Lecky’s intellectual contributions have added largely to 
the advanced literature of the time. His scholarship, his cul¬ 
ture, his freedom from antiquated crudities and myths are his 
distinguishing characteristics. 


994 


MRS. HENRIETTA BUCKNER 


MRS. HENRIETTA BUCKNER. 


This estimable lady was born in the State of Maine about 
half a century ago, and resided there through childhood and 
youth. Both her father’s father and her mother’s father were 
Baptist clergymen, and she, of course, very naturally inherited 
the Baptist faith. When still a child she was thoughtful and 
serious, and often pondered with tearful eyes and an aching 
heart on what are termed “religious subjects.” The only library 
which she had access to for many years consisted of the “New 
Testament,” “Baxter’s Call,” “The Saint’s Best,” “Pilgrim’s 
Progress,” and “Welcome to Jesus.” These she read and re¬ 
read until the cold, cruel theology which they contained crushed 
all the joy and gladness of her young heart into an unnatural 
state of gloom and apprehension. From this sort of reading, 
and from the conversation of the ministers and pious persons 
who visited her father’s house, she was impressed with the idea 
that she was a most wicked little piece of humanity, despised 
of God and his angels, and that it was only through the coax¬ 
ings and pleadings of Jesus that kept an angry God from 
plunging her into a real lake of fire and brimstone. 

The terror which this style of belief engendered was not 
solely on her own account. She had learned that by far the 
greater part of the human family were doomed to be lost. In 
view of this she often begged and pleaded in her prayers that 
all innocent babes might die in babyhood and thus escape the 
burning lake. She be.ieves that had not her mother been an 
invalid, necessitating hard labor and constant occupation from 
herself, she would, during the years of early womanhood, have 
become insane. At the age of sixteen she attended camp-meet¬ 
ing and became “awakened.” Those who made it their busi¬ 
ness to pray and shout warned her of “the wrath to come” in 
the most zealous manner, and enjoined her to “give her heart 
to Jesus” and “get religion,” and she tried as faithfully to do 
so as she knew how. 


MRS. HENRIETTA BUCKNER. 


905 


Years of distress sped by. Darkness hung over her like a 
pall. At length a reaction took place, and she felt that perhaps 
God would save her, and a kind of peace took possession of 
her mind. She related her experience, and the minister told 
her “Jesus had visited her soul ” and that she was “one of the 
elect.” But notwithstanding this, she was often disturbed with 
the old perplexing doubts and fears. Thus time passed with 
her till nearly nineteen years of age. Her only education con¬ 
sisted in knowing how to read and to cypher in the four ground 
rules of arithmetic. She left home determined to labor until 
she could earn enough to enable her to go to school and acquire 
an education. At twenty-two she entered school; at twenty-four 
she commenced teaching, accompanied with the study of some 
special branch. She has taught twenty-four years, a part of the 
time in Philadelphia and more in the South, and she has been 
a successful and popular teacher. 

In 18 G 6 she married Mr. Buckner, a preacher and the father 
of two preachers, and the grandfather of another preacher. It 
thus became her duty to entertain, from time to time, many of 
the clergy. She maintained an honorable position in the church 
many years, and freely gave time and money for church pur¬ 
poses. She was perfectly honest in the matter, and conscien¬ 
tiously refused to let reason or common sense have anything to 
do with her theology. But as year after year of her life passed 
away she found herself almost unconsciously wearing away 
from the old faith. 

It is within the last two years, however, that she really 
entertained serious doubts of the truth of the Christian faith. 
In re-reading the Bible in a critical manner she found much 
that she could not reconcile with science and reason, and she 
very naturally came to the conclusion that through all her life 
she had been wrong. The belief which she had so long enter¬ 
tained that the Bible was a truthful and divinely-inspired book, 
was dissipated. She even became disgusted with its cruelties 
and obscenity. She procured and eagerly read standard scien¬ 
tific and Liberal works. These confirmed her in the conviction 
that her skepticism had not been ungrounded. Her faith in 
myths and supernaturaiism was gone. 

When this fact was learned by her church, anathemas were 


996 


MRS. HENRIETTA BUCKNER. 


dealt upon her head. Persecutions followed, and efforts were 
made to injure her and the school of which she was at the 
head. Although she strove more earnestly than ever to dis¬ 
charge every duty that devolved upon her, and though she felt 
conscious that she was really a better and more patient teacher 
than ever, she received more unkindness than in all her life 
before. When she fully realized that the honest convictions 
she had arrived at placed her virtually outside of the pale of 
the church, she trembled for the future. She counted the cost 
carefully. On the side of the church she would have respect, 
friendship, aid, and distinguished recognition. On the other 
side she would meet frowns, coldness, neglect, and enmity. As 
much, however, as it pained her to break off old ties and old 
associations, she felt impelled to yield to truth wherever it 
might lead her. 

At the time this change of views took place she had a vol¬ 
ume of poems of her own composition, written when she was a 
Christian and from a Christian standpoint, which were approved 
and applauded by all who had read them. This volume was in 
the hands of the publisher, but she felt constrained to recall it, 
though many of her near friends were thereby disappointed. 

Mrs. Buckner’s case is one of unusual rapid evolution of 
thought. It usually takes many years for a person standing in 
orthodox ranks to emerge into the full light of scientific Ration¬ 
alism ; but she has effected the change in less than two years. 
Early prejudices and early superstitions have all departed and 
she enjoys the perfect freedom and peace of mind which only 
the progressed thinker can enjoy. She is far happier than when 
she counted herself a devoted Christian. In a recent letter to 
the writer she says: “I am now fifty-two years of age. The 
past with all its anguish and its small joys is behind me. The 
present is full of peace and a kind of triumphant gladness. 
The “eternal future” for myself and my fellow beings I do 
not dread. I try to do my duty; I love Nature as I never 
loved her before; but if death comes this evening or to-morrow 
I feel sure I could lie down to my last rest in perfect trust that 
the Great Power working through all things will keep me safe 
from any real harm, and I am as sure and trusting for the 
general, final good of humanity as for myself.” 


0. M. WEATHERBY. 


997 


C. M. WEATHERBY. 

The Mississippi Valley is becoming eminent for the number 
of Freethinkers who are locally prominent in disseminating the 
truths that will eventually liberalize the world. But very few 
of them, however, were born in the State in which they now 
reside. Among such men is Charles Murray Weatherby, of 
Dubuque, Iowa. 

Like thousands of other genuine Liberalists, he was a native 
of that American home of selfish, prejudiced and intolerant 
Puritanism — New England. A contemplation of the West, 
twenty-five years ago, with its grand rivers, bordered by majes¬ 
tic forests, and its broad, intervening prairies, enlarged his com¬ 
prehension as to Nature, and expanded his views in relation 
to his race and in reference to the Universe. 

Mr. Weatherby was born in New Market, Bockingliam Co., 
New Hampshire, in 1835, and is now in the strength of life at 
the age of forty-one. His father was for a long time what the 
Catholics call a Protestant or heretic, but with increasing 
years he observed that much of what is called religion was 
mere hypocrisy in disguise, and that superstition was the 
ground-work of all the creeds. By degrees he made such pro¬ 
gress in duty and principle that he became a Unitarian and 
next a Universalist, and now at the age of eighty years he lives, 
a highly respected citizen at Fulton, Jackson County, Iowa. 
His son, the subject of this sketch, removed, with his father’s 
family, to the West in 1S52, and to Dubuque in 1857. 

After a year of hard work, he sought more intellectual 
employment, and became chief clerk in an insurance office, a 
business in which he is still engaged. Twenty years ago he 
began earnest and industrious investigations of all the doctrines 
of the many religions. With only a moderate salary, his pru¬ 
dence and economy enabled him to purchase books, from time 
to time, until he has now one of the best private libraries in a 
city of twenty-five thousand people and twenty kinds of churches. 


993 


C. M. WEATHEItBY. 


His theological and and scientific books having a bearing directly 
or indirectly on the grand thought that man is man and noth¬ 
ing else, now number twelve hundred volumes, and his other 
books as many more. lie has been no less a student of the 
Bible of the Jews and Christians than of the Bibles of more 
millions of peoples of other religions. 

He devoted a part of his spare time to natural science and 
literary labor for journals and periodicals. One of his papers, 
on “Insect Senses,” though unpublished, was an honor to him 
as a scientist. Mr. Weatherby is one of the most unassuming 
men in the community. The duties at his desk are discharged 
so faithfully, and his business intercourse is conducted with 
such a gentle manner that the patrons of his employer only 
know him as a polite clerk, attentively correct in all business 
affairs. 

It is to such industrious and freethinking men of the living, 
active present age that the world is indebted for the promulga¬ 
tion of the new truths that will, by steady progress, soon teach 
good men and true women a higher law than is to be found in 
the Bibles or the statute books. Mr. Weatherby likes to hear 
popular lecturers on subjects pertaining to the free school of 
public thinking as much as his fellow citizens love to hear him 
from the same stand on similar subjects. 

Mr. Weatherby is distinguished for geniality, sociability and 
warm-hearted friendship. He is a liberal patron of Eadical pub¬ 
lications and lectures, generously contributing from his moder¬ 
ate income for these objects. He is not one of the class of 
Liberals who when they feel that they have themselves escaped 
from the meshes of theology and priestcraft have no care or 
concern for those still remaining in bonds. He is willing to 
aid in spreading the truth. 

The world needs more men like Mr. Weatherby, of pure 
character, spotless reputation, with freethinking and judicious 
expression of the great and grand truths which modern science 
Is placing before the world. He has many years of usefulness 
yet before him, and when, in the fullness of his time, he shall 
depart, in obedience to the natural laws that govern the human 
race — laws under which he lives his good life — few men will be 
more missed among his friends than Charles M. Weatherby. 


W. F. JAMIESON. 


999 


W. F. JAMIESON. 

"W. F. Jamieson was born in Montreal, Canada, April 24, 
1837. Early in life he was apprenticed to the lion. William 
Phelps, Detroit, to learn the business of a confectioner. His 
parents were pious people, and he had a thoroughly Christian 
training; but about the seventeenth year of his age he began 
to reason and to search for truth for himself. It was not long 
before he delivered himself from the dogmas of theology. He 
has often been heard to say that a happier youth never trod 
the earth than he when l.e found himself free from the horrible 
nightmare of Christianity. In 1854 he entered Albion College, 
Michigan, but the death of his father a few days after, necessi¬ 
tated his leaving to care for the family (he being the eldest of 
six children). 

In 1859 he married, and soon after commenced lecturing. In 
1862 he held his famous debate with Elder Moses Hull, the 
then renowned champion of Adventism, at Paw Paw, Mich., 
which resulted in the immediate conversion of Mr. Hull to Spir¬ 
itualism. Since then Mr. Jamieson has held many debates with 
the clergy of various denominations, and has been instrumen¬ 
tal in converting two other ministers, Kev. Mr. Butterfield and 
Elder Kobert G. Eccles, to Liberal thought as exemplified in 
modern Spiritualism. At the close of the thirty-two sessions’ 
debate with the latter gentleman, Mr. Jamieson, perceiving his 
genius, advised him to devote his life to scientific pursuits. Mr. 
Eccles accordingly devoted four years to the study of science; 
and to-day he is recognized as one of the profoundest and most 
promising young men in the scientific world. 

He afterwards held a closely-contested debate with Elder 
Miles Grant, editor of the ‘‘World’s Crisis,” who was unspar¬ 
ing in his denunciation of him as a “bold blasphemer.” The 
title of the first article Mr. Jamieson ever wrote for the press 
furnishes the key-note of his character — “ Duty vs. Policy ”— 
published in the “Illumanati” in 1855. He has always abomin- 


1C00 


W. F. JAMIESON. 


ated expedients, and although a zealous Spiritualist, has always 
condemned such manifestations as would not bear the fullest 
investigation and the light of day. He is a geologist and astron¬ 
omer, and a devoted student of the sciences. 

For years he has, in an earnest way, been shouting in the 
ears of apathetic Liberals the ringing words of Jefferson, “ Let 
tl:e eye of vigilance never be closed!” He insists that the 
friends of liberty in America are slumbering upon a volcano of 
religious strife. The proofs he gives that such a war is inevi¬ 
table are clearly and conclusively set forth in his great work, 
entitled, “The Clergy a Source of Danger to the American 
Republic. ,, Every page of this book is crammed with informa¬ 
tion, and his words of burning earnestness are calculated to 
open men’s eyes to the danger of the God-in-the-Constitution 
movement. He is bold and aggressive in his treatment of 
creeds and churches, and shows but little respect for the priest¬ 
hood. 

From the commencement of his public career he has been 
an earnest advocate of the equal rights of woman with man in 
all the relations of life. As a debater, Mr. Jamieson is severely 
logical and radical, quick at repartee, unsparing in criticism, 
but yet courteous and winning in manner. Prof. S. B. Brittan 
describes him as “the man with the long arm and naked 
lance.” Mr. Jamieson is vehemently iconoclastic in his crusade 
against every sort of slavery and iniquity, but is an active and 
efficient wprker in every cause which has for its object the well 
being of mankind. 

“ Friend of the slave, and yet the friend of all; 

Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when 
The need of battling Freedom calls for men 
To plant the banner on the outer wall; 

Gentle and kindly, even at distress 
Melted to more than woman’s tenderness. 

Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty’s post 
Fronting the violence of a maddened host, 

Like some gray rock from which the waves are tossed,” 

Such is our friend, W. F. Jamieson. 


CHARLES BRADLAUGH. 


1001 


CHARLES BRADLAUGH. 


Next in our library of the lives of the world’s progressive 
heroes, is this Hercules of English Secularism, one of the most 
invincible vindicators of Freethought now alive. A few years 
ago the readers of Liberal literature in Europe and America 
w T ere asking, Who is Iconoclast? To-day the name of Bradlaugh 
is an inspiration to all the fighters of civil and mental tyranny, 
and the great generous heart of humanity acclaims it all honor 
in the Old World and the New. 

Charles Bradlaugh was born September 26, 1833. His father 
w r as a poor, but Industrious man —a solicitor’s clerk with a small 
salary. But little needs to be related of the early life of the 
son. His schooling, like that of most poor men’s children, was 
small in quantity, and indifferent in quality. His education was 
completed before he was eleven years of age. At the age of 
twelve he was employed as errand boy in the solicitor’s office 
where his father remained his whole li"e. After staying two 
years at this occupation he became wharf clerk and cashier to 
a firm of coal merchants. At this time he was a member of 
the Church of England and teacher of a Sundav-school; but 
while preparing for confirmation he studied the thirty-nine 
articles and the gospels, and came to the conclusion that they 
widely differed. Venturing to set forth his difficulty in a re- 
soectful letter to his incumbent, he was denounced by him as 
an Atheist, and suspended from his office of Sunday-school 
teacher. In his “ Autobiography ” he tells us that at that 
period he shuddered at the very notion of becoming an Atheist. 

Participating in the open air debates on Bonner’s Fields, he 
always espoused the orthodox Christian side; and it was not 
till after a debate with Mr. Savage, in 1849, on the “ Inspiration 
of the Bible,” that his views became tinged with Freethought* 
His having become a teetotaler being regarded as conclusive 
testimony of his Infidel tendencies, he was given three days by 
his employers in which to change his opinions or lose his situ- 


1002 


CHABLES BBADLAUGH. 


% 


ation. On the third day he left home and situation, and never 
returned to either. 

Being a fluent speaker he was called upon to speak frequently 
at the Temperance Hall, and in Bonner’s Fields, where scores 
of hundreds congregated to hear him. His views were then 
Deistical, but rapidly tending to the extreme phase which has 
characterized his later life. He soon met the Holyoake brothers 
and Emma Martin, and began to take an interest in that 
famous Infidel sheet, the “Reasoner.” In 1850 he wrote his 
first pamphlet, “A Few Words on the Christian’s Creed,” and 
was vigorously assailed by the “British Banner.” 

When he left home he was but sixteen years of age, and 
without one farthing in his pocket. He was very poor, but also 
very proud. He tried to earn a living as a coal merchant, but 
could not raise means enough to make the business profitable. 
Rejecting a subscription offered him by a few Freethinkers, he 
went away, telling no one where he was going, and joined the 
Dragoon Guards. This regiment, during the time he remained 
in it was quartered in Ireland. He used to lecture to the men 
in the barrack-room at night, and frequently broke out of the 
barracks to deliver teetotal speeches in his scarlet jacket, along 
with James Houghton and Bev. Dr. Spratt, in the city of Dublin. 

Upon the death of his aunt, in 1853, he was left a small sum, 
out of which he purchased his discharge and returned to Eng- 
and, to aid in the support of his mother and family (his father 
having died). He obtained employment in the day time with a 
solicitor, and in the evening as clerk to a Building Society; but 
he still continued to write and lecture. To avoid the efforts 
made to ruin him on account of anti-Christian views, he adopted 
the nom deplume of “Iconoclast,” under which all his writings 
appeared down to 1868. In 1855, in conjunction with John Watts 
and others, he commenced the publication of a series of papers 
entitled “Half Hours with Freethinkers.” 

In 1858, when Mr. Truelove was suddenly arrested for pub¬ 
lishing the pamphlet, “ Is Tyrannicide Justifiable ? ” Mr. Brad- 
laugli undertook his defense, at the same time conducting the 
defense of Simon Bernard, who was arrested for alleged com¬ 
plicity in the Orsini tragedy. In June, 1858, he held his first 
formal theological debate with the Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A., a 


CHARLES BEADLAUGH. 


U03 


dissenting minister, at Sheffield. Daring the same yea • he was 
elected President of the London Secular Society, in place of 
George Jacob Holyoake. In November he took the editor¬ 
ial chair of the “Investigator,” formerly occupied by Robert 
Cooper. Want of room precludes detailing his eventful lectur¬ 
ing tours through the large towns of England and Scotland, the 
halls in which he was to speak being frequently garrisoned by 
police, and the lecture prevented; as also his many important 
debates, one with a Jewish Rabbi at Sheffield, one with Mr. 
Court, of the Glasgow Protestant Association, one with a Mr. 
Smart at Paisley, and one with T. D. Matthias, at Halifax. 

In the early part of 1860 , aided by friends in different parts 
of England, he started the “National Reformer,” which still 
continues under his management. Public discussions continued 
to grow on him thick and fast. In 1860 he engaged in several, 
a second debate with Rev. Brewin Grant, lasting four weeks. 
In Guernsey the hall in which he was lecturing was broken 
into by a pious, drunken mob with shouts of “Kill the Infidel!” 
At Plymouth the Young Men’s Christian Association had him 
arrested at an open air meeting. In 1868 he became a candidate 
for Parliament, b t considering his ultra views, and that all the 
journals in England, except three, were against him, it is not 
a matter of surprise that he was beaten. He has twice since, 
however, been a candidate, the last time coming very near 
being elected. The increased vote for him each time indicates 
his growing popularity; and the Secular party are sanguine in 
the expectation of yet placing Charles Bradlaugh in Parliament. 
During the later years of his life he has written much, edited 
the “National Reformer,” made two visits to the United States, 
and encountered upon the platform some of the ablest Christian 
debaters in England. Three times he has measured swords 
with the government with reference to the “right of meeting,” 
and each time the victory has been his. 

In all the radical reforms of the time he has been a true 
worker. His career has been marked by a determined opposi¬ 
tion to error in every creed and injustice in every country. He 
is a man who has made himself, despite of conditions; and 
whom, despite the bitter breath of bigotry, the world is begin¬ 
ning to comprehend and admire. 


1004 


CHARLES WATTS. 


CHARLES WATTS. 


This energetic and able worker in the unpopular cause of 
Freethouglit was born in Bristol, West of England, February 
27, 1835. His parents were pious Christians, being members of 
the Methodist body to which Mr. Watts belonged until he 
reached the age of sixteen years. 

From his boyhood days young Watts showed a fondness for 
intellectual pursuits, for when only nine years of age he joined 
a favorite debating class and immediately after an elecutionary 
society. His first lecture was given at the early age of fourteen 
years; the subject “The Curse of the Nation and its Remedy.” 

He was duly indoctrinated with the Christian creed, includ¬ 
ing “the divine plan of salvation of the world”— the great 
atonement — by which the innocent Son of God was put to a 
painful, ignominious death to appease the anger of the kind 
father of all, and to render it possible for a small fraction of 
the human race to be saved from a never-ending hell of burn¬ 
ing fire and brimstone which he had prepared for the whole 
world. All books calculated to show the absurdity of this most 
abhorent doctrine, and all works of a skeptical character, were 
carefully kept from him by his watchful parents. 

At the age of sixteen lie left home and found his way to 
London where he made the acquaintance of Charles Southwell 
and other advocates of Freethought. He now read secular liter¬ 
ature with not a little avidity. He found in it a more reasona¬ 
ble and more acceptable system of belief than the Methodist 
Church had afforded him. Ere long he became a Deist, and 
lost faith in the marvelous, impossible story of the miraculous 
conception of the God of heaven, and that nearly nineteen hun¬ 
dred years ago he passed through the nine months of gestation, 
the puling years of infancy, adolescence and youth, with all 
the rest of that mythical legend which his parents and pastors 
had instilled into his young mind. 

For several years he worked in his brother’s printing office 


CHARLES WATTS. 


1005 


in London and became an adept in the printer’s art. In 1859 
he was introduced to Charles Bradlaugh, since which time a 
fast friendship has existed between them. In 1860 he became 
assistant editor of the “ National Reformer,” which position he 
has continued to hold up to the present time, and ably has he 
discharged the arduous duties of that post. Large numbers of 
his able, clear and logical editorials haye been perused with 
due appreciation by the Secularists of Great Britain and in 
other countries. 

In 1866 he avowed himself an Atheist. That central super¬ 
stition around which all others cluster became entirely removed 
from his searching, grasping mind. In 1869 he was elected 
special lecturer of the National Secular Society, which office 
he continued to fill till June, 1876, when he resigned, as the 
duties as Editor, Printer and Publisher of the “National Re¬ 
former” required his constant attention. During the last ten 
years he has delivered several hundred lectures in England, 
Wales and Scotland on theological, social and political subjects. 
He is a very interesting speaker, excelling in elocution and elo¬ 
quence, while his clear logic lias carried conviction to thou¬ 
sands of hearts. He is a man of unusually fine presence, a 
handsome, genial face, a commanding figure and distinguished 
bearing. He has met in debate all the leading exponents of 
the Christian faith and he has invariably acquited himself to 
the satisfaction of his friends. He is very fond of debate. 

He has written numerous pamphlets on Secularism, the Bible, 
Monarchy and Republicanism. As a writer he is, strong, clear 
and comprehensive. 

In politics Mr. Watts is a thorough Republican, and ably by 
lien and voice has he advocated republican principles. He is 
eminently a Humanitarian and the labor of his life is to spread 
light among his fellow men and to use his efforts in elevating 
them to a higher degree of intelligence, usefulness and happi¬ 


ness. 


1006 


CROOKES. 


WILLIAM CROOKES, F.R.S. 

It is but proper that this distinguished scientist should 
occupy a brief space in these pages, though it is to be regret¬ 
ted that the desired biographical data concerning him is not at 
hand. He has resided in London many years, is a member of 
the Royal Society, is noted as one of the first chemists of the 
age, and for some years edited with ability “The Journal of 
Chemistry,” published in London. He is a man in middle life, 
but has been prominent before the public for many years. 

Aside from his scientific pursuits and attainments, he has 
distinguished himself greatly within the last few years as an 
investigator into the phenomena of Spiritualism, to which he 
has rigidly applied the tests of science in connection with the 
most accurate and sensitive apparatus. He devoted much time 
to the pursuit, and the tests he applied and the results he 
arrived at were deemed most satisfactory to his friends and the 
devotees of Spiritualism. His investigations were published at 
length in “The Quarterly Journal of Science,” and from this 
they have been reprinted in pamphlet form and largely sold. 

Prof. Crookes cooperated with Prof. Wallace and Prof. Var- 
ley, the electrician, in the researches alluded to, and in their 
testimony as to the character of the phenomena agrees very 
closely. The Spiritualists of Europe and America have abund¬ 
ant reason to be proud of such acquisitions to their ranks. 
These men have done more to give character to the large and 
varied class of peculiar phenomena that have taken place in 
the presence of certain persons called “ mediums ” than any per¬ 
sons living. The concurrent evidence of three such eminent 
scientists and specialists has carried conviction to the minds of 
thousands. Frau 1 has unquestionably been practiced in many 
instances; the public has often been imposed upon, and the 
credulous easily gulled, but with the time, the care, the watchful¬ 
ness and precaution used by these three gentlemen named, it is 
hard to think they were the dupes of fraud and trickery. 


BOBER T G. INGERSOLL. 


1007 


\ 


ROBERT G, INGERSOLL. 

With pride we add the name of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll 
to the list of the World’s Infidels and Thinkers. He is emi¬ 
nently worthy of being so enrolled. His eloquence, his rhetoric, 
his boldness of utterance, his deep thought, his advanced views, 
and his firm convictions have endeared him to the Freethinkers 
of America and the world. His utterances are probably more 
eagerly sought for by Liberals and Ration 'lists than the utter¬ 
ances of any living man. The grand, glorious things he has 
said will live long after his body has returned to Nature’s em¬ 
brace. 

Not having been fortunate in securing accurate data as to 
his birth and early personal history, we can only say from such 
information as we have, that he was born in Yates Co., N. Y. 
some forty-five years ago; that he was the son of a clergyman, 
but that while still a youth he ceased to believe the doctrines 
his father taught, and had the independence to step forward' 
and occupy higher ground where he could feel that he had 
perfect mental liberty, and where he was not asked to give 
assent to the antiquated creeds and dogmas that are the relics 
of the myths and superstitions of ages long past. 

After completing his education he studied law and he is now 
regarded as the leading lawyer and advocate in the West. His 
home for many years has been in Peoria, Illinois, where, sur¬ 
rounded by his estimable wife, Eva, his lovely daughters, hosts 
of admiring friends and neighbors, he is passing an active and 
happy life. He has a fine physique, and a pie sant, genial face. 
He stands nearly six feet in height, and weighs fully two hun¬ 
dred pounds. He is the very picture of geniality, good nature 
and good health. He enjoys good living, good society, good 
friends, good citizens, good sense, and is emphatically a good 
fellow. 

It would be a great source of gratification to the thousands 
of his admirers in the Liberal ranks if he would oftener give 


1008 


ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 


them specimens of his unequaled eloquence and his matchless 
/ oratory; but his business so engrosses his time and attention 

that he does not find it possible. The orations he has delivered, 
“The Gods,” “Thomas Paine,” “Humboldt,” “Individuality,” 
and “Heretics and Heresies,” will long live in the hearts of 
men, and will be handed down to the latest posterity. These 
have been published in a unique volume, and also in a cheap 
style. Every man who has a mind of his own, who enjoys the 
bold utterances of a brave exponent of Reason, Truth, and 
Mental Progress, will hardly fail to have by him the inimitable 
orations of Robert G. Ingersoll. 

We can do no better than present the reader a few quota¬ 
tions from the favorite author: “Custom meets us at the cradle 
and leaves us only at the tomb; our first questions are answered 
by ignorance, and our last by superstition.” 
j. “Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given 
by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak. This word was 
born of intellectual slavery in the feudal ages of thought.” 

“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, 
rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me 
from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of 
the tree of knowledge.” 

“The enfranchisement of the soul is a slow and painful pro¬ 
cess. Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, Fear 
and Faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world, and 
will, until the mind of woman ceases to be the property of 
priests.” 

“A believer is a bird in a cage, a Freethinker is an eagle 
parting the clouds with tireless wing.” 

“ The Church has been, and still is, the great robber. She 
has rifled not only the pockets, but the brains of the world. She 
is the stone at the sepulchre of liberty; the upas tree, in whose 
shade the intellect of man has withered; the Gorgon beneath 
whose gaze the human heart has turned to stone.” 

“We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the 
honorable; when the true shall be the beautiful, and when 
Reason, throned upon the world’s brain, shall be the King of 
Kings and God of Gods.” 


HAECKEL. 


1009 


HAECKEL. 

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel the eminent German naturalist 
was born in Potsdam, February 1G, 1834. His early predilections 
were for botanical studies and while still at the gymnasium 
prepared a work upon that subject. He studied anatomy and 
histology in Wurzburg and in Berlin under the ablest teachers. 
In 1858 he settled in Berlin as practicing physician, but a fifteen 
months’ residence in Italy during 1339-60, which he employed in 
zoological researches finally withdr w him from the practice of 
medicine and confirmed him a professed zoologist. In 1862 he 
was made professor extraordinary, in the University of Jena. 
In the same year he wrote an essay on radiating rhizopods 
for which a gold medal was awarded. He introduced forty- 
six new genera and one liundrjd and forty-four new species, 
before unknown. He avowed his conviction “ of the muta¬ 
bility of species and of the actual genealogical relationship of all 
organisms.” He recognized the great merits of the Darwin¬ 
ian theory and pointed out its logical consequences. This was 
before the doctrines of Darwin were as popular as they have 
since become. When in September, 1868, he appeared before the 
convention of German physicians and naturalists held in Stillin 
as an enthusiastic advocate of Darwinism he stood almost 
alone. Thenceforth he determined to devote his life to the 
extension, establishment and promulgation of the doctrine of 
evolution. In 1865 the University of Jena created a regular 
Chair of Zoology especially for him and he began to perform 
by personal collection a museum which has since become one 
of the most valuable in existence. His numerous lectures and 
essays made the University at Jena extremely popular. He 
has refused numerous advantageous offers from other institutions 
of learning, chiefly, perhaps, because he wished not to be sep¬ 
arated from his friend and co-laborer, Gogenhaur. 

In 1866 he completed a work which, though eclipsed in pop¬ 
ularity by two of his later works, the Nalurliche , Schopfungsge - 


1010 


HAECKEL. 


schichte and Die Kalkschwamme must be considered one of the 
landmarks of biological science; this is the Generelle Morpho- 
logie der Organismen (2 vols. 8 vo). Its purpose was to trace for 
anatomy and embryology “immutable natural law in all events 
and forms.” The amount of positive information which this work 
contains is remarkable. "We are told in the preface that twenty 
years previously (that is, when he was only twelve years of 
age), he had two herbariums; the official one containing typi¬ 
cal forms, all carefuly labeled as separate and distinct species, 
the other a secret one, in which were placed the “bad kinds” 
of rubus, rosa, salix, etc., presenting a long series of individu¬ 
als transitional from one good species to another. These were 
at this time the forbidden fruits of knowledge, which in leisure 
hours were his secret delight. He had, later in life, greeted 
Darwin’s revival transmutation theory with enthusiasm. Again 
and again in existing forms he traced development from preex¬ 
isting ones. Many biologists, among them Professor Huxley, 
have pronounced this the most important work of the kind ever 
published. 

During the winter of 1866 Haeckel made a zoological excur¬ 
sion to the Canary Islands, remaining three months at Areeifi, 
the harbor town of the island Lanzarote. His report of the 
trip and his discoveries were published upon his return, and 
passed through several editions. The German reading public 
were thus made familiar Avith his labors. The work was trans¬ 
lated into se\ T eral languages. Darwin says of it in the introduc¬ 
tion to his “Descent of Man”: “If this work had appeared 
before my essay had been written, I should probably never 
kave completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have 
arrived, I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge 
on many points is fuller than mine.” 

Haeckel’s “ Biogolische Stuclien Protisten” (1870), is a collec¬ 
tion of papers on Moneres, “On Catallacts, a new Group of 
Porotists.” In 1869 a gold medal Avas aAvarded him at Utrecht 
for an essay on the development of siphonophores. He spent 
the months of August and September of that year on the coast 
of Norway, and March and April of 1871 on the Dalmatian 
coast at Loesina and Frieste; while in 1873 he madem more 
extended excursion into the East. During the last four years he 


HAECKEL. 


1011 


has delivered popular lectures at Jena and at Berlin, which 
have been extensively published. He has also written largely 
on various subjects for scientific journals and literary periodi¬ 
cals. In the investigation and pictorial representation of new 1 * 
genera and species, and the description of the structure and 
functions of comparatively unknown members of the animal 
kingdom, as species of crabs, sponges, etc., he has enriched the 
knowledge of the world more than all previous investigations 
put together. His aim is to prove the theory of descent in a 
way that had never before been attempted, namely, analytic¬ 
ally, by collecting the genealogical connections into complete 
group of organisms of the various forms distinguished from 
each other, as species, genera, etc. What Darwin and all others 
had attempted was to solve the origin of species synthetically, 
i. e., to prove the truth of the transmutation theory by argu¬ 
ments, from philosophy and biology, from comparative anatomy 
and paleontology, by considerations of mutual affinities of 
organic beings, of their embryological relations, their geolog¬ 
ical distribution, geological succession, etc. To such consider¬ 
ations Darwin had added the theory of natural selection. 
Haeckel had applied the synthetical method to organic forms. 
But experience lias shown that the synthetical proof alone 
is not esteemed sufficient by all biologists. Many have asked 
for analytical proof, and such proof Haeckel has undertaken to 
furnish. He selected the group of calcareous sponges, and has 
shown by thousands of examinations, the gradual transition 
from the most simple to the most perfect sponge form. This 
was the first attempt made to follow up the bona species into 
its last and darkest nook, to bring it to the light, and to show 
that it is originally and always a mala species. 

In 1874 Haeckel’s “ Gastrsea Theory, the Phologenetic Classifi¬ 
cation of the Animal Kingdom, and the Homology of the Germ 
Lagus ” appeared, in which his theory is further elaborated 
He holds that the infusoria and still more simple organisms 
have nothing which corresponds with the gas'rula stage; and 
he divides the animal kingdom into the two great groups pro - 
tozoa, including moneres, amoeba, and gregarina (which together 
he calls ovularia), and infusoria; and metazoa , or gastrozoa, the 
descendants of the gastrma, which include on the one hand the 


1012 


HAECKEL. 


zoophytes, or coelenterates, and on the other the worms, with 
the four higher classes (mollusks, echinoderms, anthropodes 
and vertebrates) which have sprung from worms. 

Prof. Haeckel’s latest and greatest work, “The History of 
Creation, or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants 
by the Action of Natural Cause,” a popular Exposition of the 
Doctrine of Evolution in general, and that of Darwin, Goethe, 
and Lamarck in particular. Published in Germany in 1875 and 
re-published by D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1876. It is an 
elaborate and clear work, and enters into the task in hand in 
the most fearless manner. In treating the doctrine of Descent, 
he does not hesitate to expose in fitting terms the utter fallacy 
and absurdity of the Bible story of creation, the flood, etc. 
An ultra-Ereethinker could scarcely express his entire want of 
confidence in the legends of Genesis than does the professor as 
he arrays the teachings of science in contrast with the fables 
attributed to Moses. 

“Although the geocentric error of the Mosaic history was 
demonstrated by Copernicus, and thereby its authority as an 
absolutely perfect divine revelation was destroyed, yet it has 
maintained, down to the present day, such influence, that it 
forms in many wide circles the principle obstacle to the adop¬ 
tion of a natural theory of development. Even in our century 
many naturalists, especially geologists, have tried to bring the 
Mosaic theory into harmony with the recent results of natural 
science, and have, for example, interpreted Moses’ seven days 
of creation as seven great geological periods. However, all 
these ingenious attempts at interpretation have so utterly failed 
that they require no refutation here. The Bible is no scientific 
book, but consists of records of the history, the laws, and the 
religion of the Jewish people, the high merit cf which, as a 
history of civilization, is not impaired by the fact that in all 
scientific questions it has no commanding importance, and is 
full of gross errors.” 

Haeckel has done very much for the world. There is hardly 
another living man of his age who has accomplished so much. 
His application, his energy and his independence of thought 
are remarkable. He is yet a young man, and will doubtless 
greatly increase the debt which the world owes him. 


SWINBURNE 


Algernon Charles Swinburne, the famous English poet, 
was born in Grosvenor Place, near Henly-on-Thames, London, 
April 5, 1837. His father was Admiral Charles Henry Swin¬ 
burne, his mother Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of George, 
third Earl of Ashburnham. He entered as a commoner at Bal- 
liol College, Oxford, in 1857, but left the University without tak¬ 
ing a degree. He afterwards visited Florence, and spent some 
time with the late Walter Savage Landor. 

In 1861 he published two plays — “The Queen Mother” and 
“Rosamond,” which attracted but little attention. These were 
followed by “Atalanta in Calydon,” (1864,) “Chastelard,” a trag¬ 
edy (1865,) “Poems and Ballads,” (1866,) tragedy in (1870). 
Among his later works are “A Song of Italy” (1867,) “Wil¬ 
liam Blake ; a Critical Essay,” (1867,) “Science,” a poem first 
published in “ Lippincott’s Magazine,” (1868,) “Ode on the Proc¬ 
lamation of the French Republic,” (Sept. 4, 1870,) “Songs before 
Sunrise,” (1871,) in which he glorifies Pantheism and Republi¬ 
canism, and “Bothwell, a Tragedy,” (1874.) At an earlier date 
“ Laus Yeneris,” which excited great comment. 

Mr. Swinburne’s chief poetical characteristics are a teeming 
and inexhaustible opulence of imagination. His imagination 
plays around every mental object with lightning rapidity, and 
transfuses it with emotional fervor. His melody is not that of 
the professional versifier, a mere reverberation of senseless vac¬ 
uity, but a subtle music of words in complete unison with the 
wedded harmony of emotion and thought. His characters are 
exquisite creations, instinct with life, and consummately beau¬ 
tiful. Of all living poets he is most akin to Shelley, both in 
religious and social conceptions and in lyrical power. His 
matchless verses to Walt Whitman concludes with these words: 

“The earth-soul Freedom, that only 
Lives, and that only is God.” 



1014 


LEON GAMBETTA. 


LEON GAMBETTA. 


This French statesman and bold Freethinker is of Genoese- 
Jewish descent, born in Cahors, October 30, 1838, He studied 
law and became a member of the Paris Bar in 1859. In 1863 he 
acquired eminence as an ultra-Liberal. In 1868 he became still 
more famous by his denunciations of the arbitrary measures of 
Louis Napoleon. In 1869 he was elected Deputy by the so-called 
party “ Irreconcilables ” for Paris and Marseilles. He meant to 
take his seat for Marseilles, but was prevented by illness until 
the beginning of 1870, when he protested in the Corps Legis- 
latif against the imprisonment of his friend and colleague, 
Rochefort, and shortly after, against Louis Napoleon’s new 
plebiscte, which he declared to be a violation of the Consti¬ 
tution. 

On the news of the surrender of Napoleon at Sedan, he pro¬ 
posed to depose the imperial dynasty, and was among the first 
to proclaim the Republic, September 4, 1870, and on the 5th he 
became Minister of the Interior in the Provisional Government 
of national defense. He took measures for convoking the elec¬ 
toral colleges; but Paris being invested by the Germans, no 
election could take place 

Early in October he escaped in a balloon to join his col¬ 
leagues at Tours. Here and afterwards at Bordeaux, he assum¬ 
ed the general direction of the movements outside of the Capi¬ 
tal, taking charge of the interior, war, and finance depart¬ 
ments. He made desperate efforts to organize new armies, 
issuing unfounded reports of victories and understating the 
importance of the defeats, which he generally ascribed to trea¬ 
son, especially the surrender of Me:z by Bazaine. When all his 
efforts to raise the siege of Paris had failed, and his colleagues 
in that capital had concluded the armistice and convoked all 
electors without regard to political parties to elect a constitu¬ 
ent, lie issued a decree at Bordeaux, January 31, 1871, disfran¬ 
chising all functionaries and official candidates of the second 


LEON GAMBETTA. 


1015 


empire and all members of royal dynasties, and announced his 
determination to continue the war to the last. Though his 
decree was declared null and void by his colleagues in Paris, 
he persevered in his active opposition, but finally tendered his 
resignation, which only increased his popularity with the masses 
of the people. 

On February 8, he was elected to the National Assembly by 
ten departments, including those destined to be included partly 
annexed to Germany. He gave the preference to that of Bas- 
Rhine, though it was certain he would lose his seat by the 
detachment of Alsace from France. 

On July 2, he was reelected in the departments of the Seine, 
Yar., and Bouches-du-Rhone, and took his seat for the last, 
which he had formerly represented. 

In November, 1871, “The Republique Francaise” appeared 
as his special organ, and he was recognized as the leader of the 
radicals. 

In the early part of 1872 he visited Southern France, stirring 
up the populace everywhere. In the autumn of the same year 
he visited the Southeastern part of France and made telling 
speeches at Grenoble, in which he attacked Theirs and the 
Bonapartists alike. 

His opposition to the promulgation of the powers of Mar¬ 
shal MacMahon, the new President, proved unavailing, but he 
is biding liis time. He has a very active, vigilant mind, and is 
destined to distinguish himself in the future of France. He is 
a total unbeliever in the claims of Christianity, and an ardent 
friend of Freedom and Progress for the human race. 

Gambetta is one of the most active men in France. It will 
be very singular if he is not again heard from in the changing 
jxditical movements of the elastic people of that country. He 
is one of the class who are not easily suppressed. In the field 
of politics or literature he is destined to attract attention in 
the future that is before him. It is well that his incentives 
and impulses are of a noble character, and that they cluster on 
the side of humani:y and are opposed to tyranny, kingcraft, 
and despotism. He is emphatically a lover of liberty, both 
physical and mental. Oppression and despotic rule hardly has 
a more deadly f<?e. 


1016 


PROCTOR. 


PROCTOR. 

Richard Anthony Proctor was born at Chelsea, England, 
March 23, 1837, and in boyhood was educated chiefly at home, 
having had bad health for several years. Subsequently, he 
pursued his studies at King’s College, London, and St. John’s 
College, Cambridge. He graduated (B.A.) as twenty-third AVran- 
gler in 1860. He -was appointed Fellow of the Royal Astronom¬ 
ical Society in 1806, and Honorary Fellow of King’s College, 
London, in 1873. In February, 1872, he was appointed Honorary 
Secretary of the “Astronomical,” and Editor of its Proceed¬ 
ings, but resigned these offices in November, 1873. 

He has at no time been a candidate for any appointment or 
salaried office of any kind, and he has not proceeded to his 
M.A degree, for the reason that it is not, like the B.A. degree, 
(at least at Cambridge,) a title representing work done, but 
money paid. Having analyzed results collected by the Hers- 
chels, Struve, and others, and carried out a series of original 
researches, including the construction of a chart of 324,030 
stars, Mr. Proctor was led to a new theory of the structure of 
the Stellar Universe; investigated the conditions of the Transits 
of Venus in 1874 and 1882, and published many illustrative 
charts. He maintained, on theoretical grounds, in 1869, the 
since established theory of the solar corona, and also that of 
the inner complex solar atmosphere, afterwards discovered by 
Young. 

Mr Proctor’s works are: “Saturn and its System ” (1865), 
“Hand-book of Stars,” and “Gnomonic Star Atlas” (1866), 
“Constellation Seasons, Sun Views of the Earth” (1867), “Half- 
hours with the Telescope” (1868), “Half-hours with Stars” 
(1869 , “Other Worlds than Ours,” and large Star Atlas (1870), 
“The Sun,” “Light Science for Leisure Hours,” and “Elemen¬ 
tary Astronomy ” (1871), “ Orbs Around Us,” “ Elementary Geog¬ 
raphy,” “School Atlas of Astronomy,” and “Essays on Astron¬ 
omy” (1872), “The Moon,” “Borderland of Science,” “Expanse 


PROCTOR. 


1017 


of Heaven,”and Second Series of “Light Science” (1873), “Uni¬ 
verse and Coming Transits,” and “Transits of Venus ” (1874). 

Our readers will remember Mr. Proctor’s two lecturing visits 
to this country, one in 1873-4, the other in 1875-6. In one of 
his lectures in this country—“ Eeligion and Astronomy ” — Mr. 
Proctor came out boldly as an Infidel of the most positive 
type. In the course of his remarks he said: “ Between Astron¬ 
omy and Dogmatic Eeligion there has been a long-standing 
feud. Astronomy, first of all the sciences, introduced doubts 
respecting the truth of portions of the Bible record. These 
doubts were not met by reasoning or expostulation, but by a 
resort to force and cruelty. Galileo was tortured for opposing 
the doctrine of a central earth. Giorda: o Bruno, venturing 
further to assert that other worlds besides our earth exist, was 
for that and similar heresies burned at the stake. . But 

soon after securing the first success, science raised new and 
more troublesome issues. Again, Astronomy was the offending 
science. . . . This attack, as it was considered, on the Bible 
narrative, though fiercely opposed by the few among the theo¬ 
logians who understood its significance, caused by no means so 
wide-spread an excitement as the first attempt to introduce the 
system of Copernicus. It was not till geologybegan to present 
the evidence of the earth’s crust, indicating a history far older 
than the Bible account, that theologians began to be notably 
disquieted. I need not remind you of the fierce contest which 
thereupon ensued.” 

After this he goes on to show how at every step theology 
was wrong in its Cosmogony, and how Science ever pointed to 
the truth of things as they are , in this, as in all other subjects, 
and that when Science could no further go, it honestly con¬ 
fessed its own limits, while Theology raved and ranted impos¬ 
sible explanations of the ever-hidden mysteries of the Universe! 
Truly may it be said that the Church will have yet to learn, on 
its very marrow-bones of defeat and confusion, that grandest 
of all confessions, “I did not know,” extracted from her very 
soul by her fast forthcoming trial and torture in the high court 
of the relentless Inquisition of Science. 


1018 


FREDERICK HOLLICE. 


FREDERICK ROLLICK. 

The subject of this sketch was born in Birmingham, Eng¬ 
land, December 22, 1818. He was educated at the “Mechanic’s 
Institute ” of that city. He became one of the lecturers in the 
socialistic movement under Robert Owen, both in England and 
America. When that movement failed he removed to the city 
of New York, which has since been his home. He subsequently 
engaged at lecturing on Anatomy, Physiology, and accompa¬ 
nied his lectures with anatomical models and charts, which 
aided very materially in giving his audience a proper under¬ 
standing of the subjects treated upon. He was probably the 
first who traveled over this country with such in splendid ana¬ 
tomical apparatus in connection with lectures delivered. He 
visited the principal towns and cities of the United States and 
imparted a vast amount of useful information to the public 
upon such subjects as they most needed information upon. The 
writer distinctly remembers hearing some of Prof. Iiollick’s 
admirable lectures on Physiology, as far back as 1850, and was 
much interested with them. The Doctor was a lucid, interest¬ 
ing, and instructive speaker. 

Dr. Hollick has published a series of works cognate to the 
subjects of his lectures, which have met with an extensive sale. 
Among them are “The Nerves and the Nervous,” “The Mar¬ 
riage Guide,” “Diseases of Woman,” “The Matron’s Manual of 
Midwifery,” “Diseases of the Generative Organs,” etc. 

Doctot Hollick is an advanced thinker, and long since dis¬ 
carded the creeds of Christendom and all other creeds that 
depend upon the existence of a personal God in the form of a 
man who has a throne somewhere in the sky, from whence his 
all-seeing eye views not only what takes place on one side of 
the globe, but on the opposite side as well; not only what is 
taking place in this comparatively small world, but in the 
countless millions of other worlds which revolve in infinite 
space. Such crude ideas, and a belief in such an impossibility 
have passed entirely from his mind. 


B. F. UIIDELY/OOD. 


1019 


B. F. UNDERWOOD. 


Benjamin Franklin Underwood was born in New York City- 
on the sixth day of July, 1830. lie is descended on the mater¬ 
nal side from an old Long Island family and on his father’s 
from good Bliodc Island stock. 

At an early ago he acquired a love for reading, and before he 
was twelve years of age his desire for knowledge was marked. 
Ho read many pious books and studied the Bible with great 
interest, and found much in that even to his immature judgment 
which seemed contradictory, unreasonable and absurd. 

When about fourteen he became acquainted with a sceptic 
who owned a copy of “ Paine’s Theological Works,” he borrowed 
and read them, and they made him an unbeliever in the Bible. 

A Christian friend loaned him a copy of Watson’s “ Apology 
for the Bible,” assuring him that he would find it a complete 
refutation of Paine’s arguments; he read it carefully, but did 
not find it what tho friend had represented. lie found that 
Watson did not attempt to re Cute a large portion of “ The Age 
of Bcason,” did not even no lice many of the arguments which 
had made the strongest impression on Underwood’s mind, and 
several of tho i>arts which Watson undertook to disprove he 
most egregiously misrepresented. Ho also read “Paley’s Evi¬ 
dences,” “Butler’s Analogy,” and other works in favor of the 
Christian religion. Thus he was a sceptic at twelve, a Deist at 
fourteen, and before he attained the age of eighteen became an 
Atheist or Materialist. He did not become a Materialist until on 
the one hand he had acquainted himself with “'Paley’s Natural 
Theology” “Dick’s Future State,” a number of the best works 
on Spiritualism and other works in defenso of Go l and a future 
existence, and on the other with “Holyoako’s Paley Debited,” 
“D’Holbach’s System of Nature,” and “Good Sense,” “It. Coop¬ 
er’s Lectures on tho Sou 1 ,” and several other works in favor 
of Materialism. The result was he became convinced that 
Christianity is a superstition, that all systems of superstition 


1020 


B. P. UNDERWOOD. 


are deadly enemies to man, and that it is the duty cf every 
person, so far as ho is able, to oppose everything which he 
believes inimical to the happiness of his fellow beings, and to 
promote whatever he thinks conducive to their felicity. 

He was one of the leading spirits in a Lib.ral association 
organized in the village of Westerly, E. I., which place w^as 
for many years his home, and, despite his youth, he was in 1857 
elected a delegate from that association to the Infidel Conven¬ 
tion held in Philadelphia that year — he being the only Rhode 
Island delegate present — and the minutes of that convention, 
as published at the time, show that he made a brief speech, 
although ho was then scarcely eighteen years of ago. It was 
about that age, too, that he gave his first public lecture in the 
city of New Haven, before a Liberal association, at which lec¬ 
ture he was very kindly introduced to the audience by the well- 
known lecturer, Hr. H. B. Storer, of Boston. 

He was a member of the Wide-Awake organization in 1860, 
and was among the first to offer his services to the Government 
in 18G1 on the breaking out of the civil war. And those servi¬ 
ces were not offered without some sacrifice on his part, for 
though he had at that time only recently attained his majority, 
yet he had already made his choice of a life partner, one of 
like views with himself. A somewhat romantic acquaintance 
with a young lady correspondent, an acquaintance which began 
with literature and ended in love, was to be appropriately con¬ 
summated by their marriage early in the year in which the war 
broke out. It was not pleasant for either of them to give up 
their cherished plans for the uncertainty and risk which ever 
attends a soldier’s life, but they were both too 3 T oung and too 
enthusiastic in the cause of liberty to make it even a question 
as to his duty in the hour of his country’s need. Had they 
been ten years older, they might have felt and acted differ¬ 
ently. 

In June, 1861, there was a second call for troops, and the 
Fifteenth Eegiment Massachusetts Volunteers, among others, 
was organized and accepted. In Company H, of this regiment 
B. F. Unfierwood enlisted as private. In July he accompanied 
his regiment to the seat of war along the Potomac. 

He was captured on the Upper Potomac, near Ball’s Bluff, 


E. F. UNDERWOOD. 


1021 


Ya., October 22, on the morning after the battle of Ball’s Bluff; 
a battle in which the Federal soldiers fought for hours against 
three times their own number, and which finally resulted in 
their defeat with terrible loss. 

As no news was heard from him by his friends at the North 
for upwards of a month after this sad affair, his name being 
reported among the missing, he was given up as dead, and a 
year later ho experienced the odd sensation of reading for him¬ 
self the many letters of sympathetic condolence and posthumous 
praise which poured in upon his home friends at this period. 

After nine wearisome months of imprisonment ho was released 
on parole in July, 1862. In the interim he had experienced 
many of the vicissitudes of prison life. Ho was obliged to 
exchange the hospitalities extended to Union soldiers in the 
tobacco warehouse at Richmond, Ya., for the prison hospital, 
where, for six weeks, he battled for life and was once given up 
to die, by reason of a fever brought on by neglect of his wound. 
In December he was sent — though scarcely recovered from his 
fever — with one hundred and seventy-five other prisoners to 
Salisbury, N. C. Here ho was fortunate in being employed as 
hospital clerk, and in gaining the confidence and good will of 
the Confederate surgeon, which gave him many llt'.lo privileges 
not o.herwise attainable, and probably saved his life by giving 
him the means of exercise. Yet with these things in his favor 
he returned home on his release very much broken in health, 
and but a shadow of his former self. So ill was he that he 
obtained his discharge from his regiment by a surgeon’s cer¬ 
tificate of disability soon after his return North 

In September, 1862, his marriage took place, having been 
delayed more than a year by reason of the war and his impris¬ 
onment. But his zeal for the Union was still unabated, and we 
find him writing again to the local paper under date of March 
3, 1863, from Newborn, N. C. : — 

“After several months’ absence I am again with the army of 
the Union. Several months ago I was in the old North State 
under widely different circumstances. Then I was held a pris¬ 
oner of war by the cnemjg and guarded by rebel bayonets with 
apparently no prospect of returning within the Union lines 
until the end of the war. And when released at length, con- 


B. T. UNDERWOOD. 


l'£2 

trary to expectation, it was on condition that I was ‘not to aid 
by arms, information or otherwise, the United States, in the 
war being waged against the Confederate States nntil regularly 
exchanged.’ In consequence of these terms I was virtually a 
prisoner, even after my release, until an exchange of prisoners 
a few months since relieved me of all obligations imposed upon 
me by the enemy. I am now with the Fifth Rhode Island 
Artillery.” 

lie remained at Newborn with this regiment until the close 
of the war. Enlisting as a private he was gradually promoted 
to the office of Adjutant of the regiment, which position he 
held until the regiment was mustered out of service in July, lSGu. 

Although the war interfered with, it did not entirely break 
up his philosophical studies or literary pursuits. Not caring 
for the dissipations common to army life, he found leisure, 
without neglecting his military duties, for reading the current 
literature and pursuing his favorite studies. Besides keeping 
up a large private correspondence, he was the regular army 
correspondent for several Rhode Island newspapers — among 
them the “Newport Daily News” — and wrote frequent articles 
for the press upon various subjects. 

It would be pleasant, as evidence of the high estimation in 
which Mr. Underwood was held, not only by his comrades in 
the war, but by his superior officers also, to quote numerous, 
letters, including documents from his Colonel, Henry T. Sisron, 
Col. George W. Tew, Gen. B. F. Butler, and others, but want of 
space will not permit. He entered as a private, and was pro¬ 
moted to corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant. Suffice it to say, 
he was a general favorite in his regiment, both with officers 
and men, as he is in private life. 

Soon after the close of the war Mr. Underwood joined the 
Freemasons and in 186 G was sent as delegate from the Palmer 
Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, and Howard Council of Select 
Masters, to the Grand Chapter and Grand Council of the State 
of Connecticut, which convened at New Haven, Conn. 

On his return from the army he found the Village Library 
of Westerly at a low ebb, in debt, neglected and almost forgot¬ 
ten, but with the help of a few other earnest workers and 
thinkers he gave new life and impetus to it —funds were raised, 


*B. F. UNDERWOOD. 


1023 


new books added, and a library association formed of which ho 
was elected President, which office lie held until he left the 
place in 1867. 

In 1867 he went to New York where he remained upwards of 
a year. He was a member of the Secular Association and other 
Liberal Societies while there, and took an active part in the 
arrangement of matters for the Paine Anniversary Celebration 
held in that city, January 29, 1868. 

In the autumn of 1868, seeing the need of lectures upon the 
subjects which he had made his life study, and feeling that 
Scientific Materialism needed a thoughtful, candid, and earnest 
interpretation to make it understood and respected in the popu¬ 
lar mind, he determined at all hazards to throw himself into the 
breach and do all that within him lay to become that needed 
interpreter. It was not a rose-strewn path he had chosen. 
How hard he found it for a year or two no one but himself 
probably knows. But we can guess what it must have been. 
To stand up firmly but still respectfully against superstition, 
bigotry, and religious zeal; to conquer in the popular mind the 
horror raised in it by the word Infidel; to be courteous and 
calm under insulting and furious religious rant; to enforce a 
hearing in the most untoward localities by a persistent, respect¬ 
ful manner, but indomitable will; to be “instant in season and 
out of season,” traveling long distances between appointments 
in inclement weather, at whatever pecuniary loss to himself — 
these are but a few of the many hard things he had to do. 
But he did them ail without a murmur or complaint, and 
failed not — and to-day he finds himself able to obtain a respect¬ 
ful and earnest hearing before large audiences wherever his 
appointments take him; and his appointments have already 
included nearly every state from Maine to Oregon. The lead¬ 
ing dailies of the large cities no longer sneer at Infidelity and 
Materialism but give his lectures large space and respectful 
mention, often publishing the “Infidel’s” lecture entire. 

Mr. Underwood’s published lectures and discussions with 
orthodox clergymen have met with a ready and rapid sale, and 
the following commendations from the x>ress speak for their 
solid worth and literary merit: The “Christian Register” says 
of his lecture on “Christianity and Materialism”: “Mr. Un- 


1024 


B, F. UNDERWOOD. 


derwood is a clear writer and a systematic thinker; he knows 
how to state his position, to weave his logic, and to set in con¬ 
trast ideas which seem to him to be opposed to each other.” 

The London “National Reformer,” noticing his “Influence 
of Christianity on Civilization,” says: “It is a grave and stern 
impeachment of Christianity, and the indictments set out, one 
by one, the historic facts which disprove the claims of Christi¬ 
anity to be the great civilizing agent of the world. It is the 
most crushing and well-sustained attack on Christianity that we 
ever met with, and will be most useful to Freethinkers, both as 
a text-book and as a directory, telling them many facts, and 
showing them w T here t.> look for more.” 

Of late years there has been a grand tidal-wave of Free- 
thought sweeping over the minds of men, and Mr. Underwood 
has nobly done his share in urging it onward in its work of 
breaking down the barriers and rubbish of superstition which 
keep men from right thinking. Let us hope that he may live 
to see the great aim of his life thoroughly gratified — the com¬ 
ing day when a person’s opinions will not make or mar his 
character in public estimation; when people will first hear 
before they decide, especially on purely speculative subjects; 
when Christianily and Materialism will stand on their own 
intrinsic truth and merit, and not in the dictum of a self-con¬ 
stituted body of spiritual directors. 

During Mr. Underwood’s public career he has held numer¬ 
ous debates with distinguished representatives of the various 
Christian churches, among whom may be named Rev. O. A. 
Burgess, President of the Northwestern Christian University, 
Indianapolis, with whom he has debated three times; Rev. 
Clark Braden, the head of an Illinois Theological Institution, 
three debates; Rev. John Maples, of Ontario, two debates; the 
Rev. Mr. Campbell, of Oregon, and others. At the time this 
page is being written he is engaged in holding a protracted 
debate with Rev. Clark Braden at Jacksonville, Ill. In these 
several debates Mr. Underwood uniformly acquitted himself to 
the entire satisfaction of liis friends. His style is clear and 
logical, he fully understands the subjects he handles, he is 
entirely courteous and gentlemanly, and becomes a favorite 
with his audiences. 


FRANCIS E. ABBOT. 


1025 


FRANCIS E. ABBOT. 

The founder and editor of “The Index” is understood to be 
a son of Hew England, and that his youth was passed in Bos¬ 
ton. He graduated at Harvard College and Divinity School, in 
each of which he ranked high for scholarship, intellectual abil¬ 
ity and independent tendencies of mind. His early writings 
show an unusual maturity of intellect. "When quite a young 
man he wrote elaborate articles 0:1 metaphysical themes in 
“The North American Review,” which won for him very com¬ 
plimentary encomiums. 

His first settlement as a minister was over the Unitarian 
church of Dover, N. H. Here his relations eventually became 
disturbed by the growing Radiea.ism of his thought and utter¬ 
ance. Two parties arose in the church — one for him the other 
against. The case was at leng h carried into Court to decide 
which should enjoy the legal rights in respect to the property, 
etc. It -was, however, decided against Mr. Abbot and his friends. 

In the controversies which grew up in the Unitarian denom¬ 
ination between the two wings — the Conservatives and the 
Radicals — Mr. Abbot was acknowledged a leader among the 
latter, and when the resolution was passed at its Saratoga Con¬ 
vention, some eight years since, committing the denomination 
to a belief in the supernatural claims of Christianity, Mr. Abbot 
took his place outside. 

In the following year (187.) “ The Index Association ” was 
formed, and the publication of “The Index” commenced at 
Toledo, O. Mr. Abbot has since been principal editor of this 
able paper, with the exception of a short interim. It has been 
noted for its cultured, intellectual character, both its editorials 
and its contributed articles. “The Index” was published four 
years in Toledo, when it was removed to Boston. 

Like all Radical and Reform journals, “The Index” has had 
its troubles and difficulties, but lias it performed its duty faith¬ 
fully; it has and is aiding materially in the advancement of 
Radicalism in America. It fills a niche in the great public 


1026 


FRANCIS E. ABBOT. 


field of thought, which, perhaps, no other paper has so long 
and so ably filled. It has been the organ of what is called the 
Free Religious Movement; an organization whose religion is 
entirely free from supernaturalism and superstition of all kinds. 
It is Radicalism in the freest sense of the term. 

Mr. Abbot is also the founder of the Liberal League move¬ 
ment, the objects of which are as follows: 1. That churches and 
other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be freed from tax¬ 
ation. 2. That chaplains shall not longer be employed at the 
national expense in Congress, and in the army and navy. 3. 
That no further public appropriations be made for schools or 
other institutions of a sectarian character. 4. That the Bible, 
as a text-book, or as a book of religion in public schools, shall 
be abolished. 5. The abolition of the appointment by the Pres¬ 
ident and Governors of religious festivals and fasts. 6. That 
judicial oaths in Courts of justice be abolished, and simple 
affirmation be substituted in their place. 7. That all laws en¬ 
joining the special or religious observance of Sunday be abol¬ 
ished. 8. That all laws enforcing Christian morality be abro¬ 
gated, and to be substituted by laws conforming to Natural 
morality, equal rights and impartial liberty. 9. That the gov¬ 
ernment shall not be administered in the interest of Christian¬ 
ity or any other special system of religion, but upon a strictly 
secular basis. 

Upon the basis of the foregoing propositions Liberal Leagues 
have been formed in various cities and towns of the country. 
On July 1 , 1876, delegates from these several leagues assembled 
in Philadelphia and held a Liberal Congress, which continued 
its meetings four days. A National League was organized — of 
which Mr. Abbot was elected President — a constitution adopted, 
as well as a series of resolutions expressive of purposes, objects 
and aims. Several able addresses were delivered, and the Con¬ 
gress was pronounced a decided success. 

In addition to Mr. Abbot’s editorial labors, he has delivered 
many addresses from time to time, on various occasions. They 
have been characterized by his usual depth and soundness of 
thought, philosophical and logical argument, and finished dic¬ 
tion. Several of these have been published in pamphlet form 
and have been extensively disseminated. 


A. J. BOYER. 


1027 


A. J. BOYER. 

This fellow-worker in the Liberal cause was born near Rox- 
bury, Pa., August 5, 1839. He was raised in a log cabin, and 
his early education was such as was afforded by a school taught 
only in the winter, and whose whole instruction was confined 
to reading, writing and arithmetic. Such books and papers as 
he could obtain he was obliged to hide away and read in secret, 
lest his father should discover his predilection for them instead 
of the practical lessons of the farm. Early in life he became 
converted to Methodism, often performing the duties of class 
leader. He read and thought much upon the popular theology, 
all the while growing more skeptical, until an elder sister 
became insane through religious excitement and died in the 
lunatic asylum, a victim of revival fanaticism; since then he 
has been a bold and defiant foe of Christianity, and has fought 
it with tongue and pen. 

At about the age of twenty-six he went to Dayton, Ohio, 
and began the publication of the “Workman’s Appeal,” a 
radical journal devoted to Labor Reform. In 1868 he issued the 
“Woman's Advocate,” which he edited for two years. In 1871 
he commenced the publication of the “Nineteenth Century” at 
Chicago, a reform journal, which was discontinued after the 
great fire. He had lost his wife while living at Dayton; he now 
married Dora Darmore, a lady somewhat celebrated as a poet¬ 
ical writer, and removed to San Francisco, Cal., in 1872. Soon 
after their arrival his wife commenced the publication of the 
“Golden Dawn,” a journal for women. 

In November, 1875, Mr. Boyer issued the “Pacific Liberal,” 
a journal devoted to Freethought, radical reform, and the secu¬ 
larization of the State, an able journal which he is at present 
conducting. In theology Mr. Boyer claims to be a Hylotheist; 
in science, a Materialist ; in morals, a Utilitarian, and in re¬ 
ligion a most positive and confirmed Infidel. May he be suc¬ 
cessful in inducing others to see the truth as he does. 


1028 


JOHN FISKE. 


JOHN FISKE. 

This young American thinker and philosopher was a student 
in, and a graduate of, Haryard University. Shortly after receiv¬ 
ing his diploma he found his way into the sanctum of an edi¬ 
tor of a daily paper. He was then about twenty years of age. 
The editor being a man well informed in regard to the philo¬ 
sophical tendencies of the times, called the young student’s 
attention to the fact that the indications were that the philoso¬ 
pher of the future must base his theories upon the world and 
man as interpreted by science, and advised him to shape his 
course accordingly. After the subject of this sketch became 
famous, he reminded his adviser of the incident referred to, in 
the beginning of his career. 

Prof. Fiske first came prominently before the public as the 
author of a series of lectures on the Positive Philosophy, which 
were delivered before the students of Cambridge University, 
and published at the time in “The New York World.” These 
lectures gave that journal an extensive circulation among think¬ 
ing people. They were subsequently revised and extended, and 
published under the title of ‘‘Cosmic Philosophy.” This work 
displays great ability, but is very unequal in merit. The por¬ 
tion devoted to the discussion of Cosmic Theism being purely 
fallacious, and in no wise warranted by positive logic. On the 
other hand, certain portions of the work display great power 
and sound philosophy. “The Influence of Infancy as a Social 
factor,” is a display of profound and original thought rarely 
equaled. Also the correlation in the development of language 
and social life, is a specimen of analytical reasoning which 
places Prof. Fiske in the front rank of the thinkers of our time. 

The Professor has contributed to the “North American Re¬ 
view” an exhaustive analysis of the etymology of the term 
“God,” which should be read by all students whose specula¬ 
tions tend in that direction. He has written extensively for the 
“Reviews,” both in England and America. Many of his papers 


JOHN FISKE. 


1029 


have been reprinted in book form, and are extremely popular. 
Prof. Fiske is at present Assistant Librarian of Cambridge. 
Ho is married and lias a family of four children. He is only 
about thirty years of age; and perhaps this fact is worthy of 
notice, as the Professor has a theory that a high order of intel¬ 
lectual endowment is incompatible w T ith the reproductive pow¬ 
ers of men and women. In his own case his theory seems to 
be at fault. 

In the February and March numbers of “ The Atlantic 
Monthly” 1876, appeared a very able treatise from the pen of 
Prof. Fiske, entitled “ The Unseen "World,” which attracted unus¬ 
ual attention. It has since been revised and published in book 
form. He enters elaborately into the original condition of the 
Universe, the evolution of matter, and barely admits that from 
a scientific standpoint, a spiritual existence may be possible, 
inasmuch as a possibility exists that there may be forms of 
material existence of which we are unable to take cognizance. 

Wo will quote a single paragraph: “Compared with the life 
ami death of cosmical systems, which we have heretofore con¬ 
templated, the life and death of individuals of the human race 
may perhaps seem a small matter; yet because we are our¬ 
selves the men who live and die, the small event is of vastly 
greater interest to us than the grand series of events of which 
it is part and parcel. It is natural that W’e should be more 
interested in the ultimate fate of humanity than in the fate of 
a v 7 orld which is of no account to us save as our present dwell¬ 
ing-place. Whether the human soul is to come to an end or 
not is to us a more important question than whether the visible 
Universe, with its matter and energy, is to be absorbed in an 
invisible ether. It is indeed only because we are interested in 
the former question that w r e are so curious about the latter. If 
wo could dissociate ourselves from the material Universe, our 
habitat, we should probably speculate much less about its past 
and future.” 

Prof. Fiske is still a young man and is destined to add much 
to the thought of the world. He is among the most brilliant 
philosophical minds of the age, with a bright future and a life 
of usefulness before him. His mind and his pen will doubtless 
still lay the world under heavy indebtedness. 


1030 


JOHN A. LANT, 


JOHN A. LANT. 

John A. Lant was born at Blairsville, Pa., December 9, 1842. 
Ho learned the printer’s trade in Pittsburgh, commencing when 
fourteen years of age. After he became a journeyman he remov¬ 
ed to Cincinnati and worked upon the “ Daily Enquirer ” of that 
city. After this he started the publication of the “Sharon 
Times ” in Pennsylvania. From thence he went to Toledo, O., 
where in 1870 he was married to Anna M. Lawton, and soon 
became editor of the “Toledo Democrat,” which paper is still 
continued. After severing his connection with that paper in 
November, 1872, he started “The Toledo Sun,” devoted to free 
speech and radical sentiments. Mr. Lant is very outspoken and 
fearless in style, and his “Infidel sheet” soon attracted the 
attention of the Christian authorities. He was arrested on the 
ground of obscenity for publishing some of the epigrams and 
letters of George Francis Train. He was arrested at the instance 
oT Anthony Comstock; he was tried in the United States Dis¬ 
trict Court, and was fined $500; but the fine was not p>aid. 

In the fall of 1874 he removed the publication of his paper 
to Berlin Hights, Ohio, where he continued it till June, 1875, 
when he removed to New York and continued his x^aper. But 
it was not long before the vigilant and the obscenity-smelling 
Comstock, who acts under a commission or authority of the 
Government, was again on Mr. Lant’s track. For x^rinting some 
rather sensational articles of Train’s, notably Beecher’s prayer, 
and an article by Dr. E. P. Miller, Mr. Lant was arrested on 
the charge of “obscenity” and thrown into prison; his family, 
strangers in the city, being sick at the time. The real offense 
with Mr. Lant’s j>aper was its bold infidelity and blasphemy, 
but as there is now no law against blasphemy, obscenity v T as 
selected as the charge to try him under, as Congress has imssed 
S£>ecial laws against that, empowering the detective who acts 
under its authority with sufficient x>ower to deprive many an 
honest and good citizen of his liberty. 

The manner in which Mr. Comstock took to make a case 


JOHN A. LANT. 


1031 


against Mr. Lant is characteristic of the inan and x^erhaios of 
the x>ersecuting cause which he serves. He wrote, or caused to 
he written, a false, hypocritical letter to Mr. Lant, sx^eaking in 
high terms of his paper as an advocate of Freethought and 
free speech, and urging him to xwess forward in the good work 
he was xmrsuing, i t the same time ordering back numbers of 
the “Sun.” Mr. Lant supposing the desx>icable hypocrite who 
wrote the letter to be an honest, truthful man, sent him the 
back numbers of his paper, including some that had been pub¬ 
lished in Berlin Hights. In these copies the extra-virtuous, 
extra-Christian Anthony Comstock — chief henchman for the 
Young Men’s Christian Association, and who is x>aid by the 
United States Government a liberal salary to smell around 
honest people’s private rights and private business who are 
imrsuing an honest livelihood, and has invested him with 
almost imperial x>ower to arraign such Iversons before a high 
government court to answer to the crime of xmblishing obscen¬ 
ity —this Comstock found in Mr. Lant’s i>aper, thus dishon¬ 
orably obtained, sufficient to base a charge upon. Lant, as 
remarked, was thrown into ixrisou, where he laid a month, 
when, by the aid of kind friends, he was bailed out. He was 
arrested July 2G, and liis trial came off in December. A Chris¬ 
tian judge, emxdoyed at a high salary by the United States and 
l^aid with the x^eox^lc’s money, and a Christian iwosecutor, a 
Christian witness, and a Christian jury, found Mr. Lant guilty. 
He was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment at hard 
labor in the Albany Penitentiary and a fine of five hundred 
dollars; and the poor man, with delicate, impaired health, with 
a wife and three little children dex>endent upon his daily toil, is 
now in prison serving out the cruel sentence for exercising the 
rights of a free man and for xmblishing matter much less obscene 
than every daily p>aper in New York has repeatedly published. 

A law for the sux^ression of literature that is really obscene 
is right, but Congress did wrong to give Anthony Comstock the 
X>ower to drag a man from his family and his business because 
he entertains and exxwesses views not in accord wi li his own. 
It is saddening in this Centennial year of the nation to see the 
liberties of the ixjoi^’o thus infringed by such a man, in such a 
manner, and for such a cause. 


1032 


SUSAN H. WIXON. 


SUSAN II. WIXON. 

Susan Helen Wixon is a native of Dennis Port, (Cape Cod,) 
Mass., the daughter of Captain James Wixon. She is of worthy 
parentage. While she was quite young her father removed to 
Fall River, Mass., and amassed a handsome fortune, Susan receiv¬ 
ing the advantage of it in her education, etc. Rut believing in 
the necessi y of an active and independent life for women, she 
taught school for some time, and has ever been actively engaged 
in all enterprises which had the good of the world in view. 

A few years since, when the operatives w^ere on a strike in 
that city, she enlisted ardently in their cause and took an active 
part in their meetings, although her father was a capitalist or 
a large stockholder in the various mill corporations. As a proof 
of the esteem in which she is held, it may be stated she has been 
elected a member of the School Committee for several years, 
and is now on that committee. 

She was educated in the Universalist faith, and for a while 
entertained Spiritualistic views, but more recently she has unre¬ 
servedly adopted the views of Materialists or Freethinkers, and 
may be ranked as one of their boldest writers and speakers. 
She has delivered numerous public lectures on radical educa¬ 
tional and reform subjects. She is an easy, interesting speaker. 
Her pleasing, unaffected manner, with the deep thought and 
sound reason which accompany her utterances make her a pop¬ 
ular speaker. She is thoroughly devoted to the cause of truth 
and is decided in her opposition to the myths and shams of false 
theology. She has made no inconsiderable sacrifices in avow¬ 
ing her honest convictions upon theological subjects. It has 
not vet become popular, especially for ladies, to acknowledge 
themselves unbelievers in the creed of orthodoxy, and when a 
young lady decides to exercise the independence to admit that 
she is a Radical, that she has thrown aside the darkening dog¬ 
mas which have so long enslaved the world, she well under¬ 
stands that she has to face the coldness, unfriendliness and per- 


SUSAN H. WHO N. 


1033 


haps scorn of the pious, intolerant and hypocritical adherents 
to popular but fallacious doctrines. Miss AVixon has been one 
of this class; in arriving at the conclusions which she has 
reached she has alike disregarded the powers and smiles of 
those who would hold her within the bonds of bigotry and 
ecclesiasticism. She has dared to be independent ; she has 
dared to be unpopular. 

Miss AVixon abounds in the graces and excellencies pecu.iar 
to the gentler sex. In cases of sickness, suffering and distress, 
she has repeatedly proved herself an angel of mercy, and a 
true friend in affliction. As a nurse in the chamber of sickness 
and death she has done most efficient service, and has carried 
consolation to many a weary, afflicted heart. Were she a Chris¬ 
tian lady she would be counted worthy to be enrolled among the 
saints who do everything for Jesus’ sake. The good deeds wktch 
MissWixon performs are for poor Humanity's sake, and not for 
Jesus, who stands in no need of her kind acts. 

She is a most pleasant correspondent. Her letters overflow 
with the genial, sympathetic qualities of her nature. Henry C. 
Wright once made the remark that he had received tens of 
thousands of letters from ladies and gentlemen in this country 
and in Europe, and among them Harriet Martineau and others, 
and that Miss AVixon’s surpassed them all. 

Several years ago Miss AVixon w*as affianced to a distinguished 
reformer and lecturer, but death took him away before the 
union was consummated; but it cannot cause her to forget him. 
His memory is revered by her in the most affectionate spirit. 

Some of the facts in this imperfect sketch are obtained from 
Mrs. Sophia AV. Kent, a great admirer of the many excellencies 
and virtues of Miss AVixon. 

Since the publication of the first edition of this work, Miss 
Wixon has brought out a volume of beautiful stories and essays 
entitled “Apples of Gold.” They are more particularly designed 
for juveniles, but are instructive to people of all ages. They 
are written in a pure, familiar, pleasing style, and have been 
well received by the Liberal public in all directions. The book 
will doubtless be a favorite one with young people for many 
— t . 0 come. 


1034 


MRS. ANNIE BESANT. 


MRS. ANNIE BESANT. 


This lady who has become so eminent as a leader in the 
ranks of the Secularist movement in England, is the daughter 
of a doctor who died while she was very young. She was b rn 
in October, 1847, and is therefore nearly thirty years of age. She 
belongs to a family of high position, and received in early life an 
excellent education. Much of her time was passed, as a girl, in 
Paris and other places on the continent, where she acquired a 
knowledge of French, German, and Italian. But little more 
than a girl when she returned to reside in England, she was 
married at an early age to a clergyman of the English Church, 
and for a time indicated tendencies favorable to High Church 
theology, her first literary effort being a tractate written in 
that sense. But as time went on her views became much mod¬ 
ified, and the differences of opinion between her and her hus¬ 
band became such that a legal separation resulted. As she has 
herself expressed it, “ the choice was between conformity and 
expulsion,” and loving truth above every other consideration, 
she chose the martyr’s course. 

She wrote first to Mr. Tlios. Scott, of Norwood, who pub¬ 
lishes monthly a number of freethought tracts. Her first article 
was published by him in 1873, and since that date she has 
written steadily for him, and still continues to do so. In 
August, 1874, Mrs. Besant began to write for the National Re¬ 
former , over the signature of “Ajax,” and her articles, indicat¬ 
ing a fine literary art and sholarship, while they were trenchant 
in substance, excited very great interest. She now appeared 
also as a public speaker, her first lecture being delivered at the 
Cooperative Institute, London, in July, 1874. The following 
February she began to occupy the platform regularly, deliver¬ 
ing lectures in London before large and cultivated audiences on 
the French Revolution, the True Basis of Morality, and other 
themes, which awakened the greatest interest and the highest 
anticipations for her further career. Those anticipations have 


MBS. ANNIE BESANT. 


1035 


been more than fulfilled. Mrs. Besant has now become the 
most popular lecturer, perhaps, in England. 

Her personal attractiveness, her youth and grace, her taste¬ 
ful dress and presence, and her flexible voice, are of themselves 
sufficient to account for much of her popularity; but the con¬ 
tinued growth of her influence and success must be ascribed to 
other and deeper qualities than these. She has evidently mas¬ 
tered the subjects of which she treats by long study and earnest 
thought. Her spirit is that of one who seeks the triumph of 
truth, and of one animated by a benevolent devotion to human 
welfare. Although, since her separation from her husband, she 
has had the care of a little daughter, she has, nevertheless, 
managed to travel through the greater part of England and 
Scotland, and lecture before large numbers of people. She has 
devoted herself not only to subjects of a religious and philo¬ 
sophical character, but also to social and political problems; and 
her good influence among workingmen has been several times 
proved, among others in the case of the recent strike of miners 
at Barnsley, where she successfully exerted herself to persuade 
the men that they were in the wrong, and thus prevented much 
useless suffering. 

Mrs. Besant, during Mr. Bradlaugh’s absence in America, in 
large part conducted the National Eeformer , and is at present 
associated with that journal, the increased circulation and influ¬ 
ence of which may in no small degree be attributed to her power¬ 
ful contributions. She writes over her own name, and weekly 
gives a vivid interpretation of current events in the religious 
and political world under the title “Daybreak.” She is also a 
regular writer for the Index , one of the leading literary and 
philosophical journals in this country. Those who peruse her 
articles, from time to time, can hardly fail to note as a more 
significant sign of the times than any on which she remarks, 
the fact that a cultivated and refined lady of her acknowledged 
abilities should have recoiled with such intensity from the con¬ 
ventional organizations and opinions of the community, and 
taken her part with the Secularists, whose main principle is the 
substitution of human service for Divine service. Mrs. Besant 
has not been free from the persecutions which still attend the 
fearless freethinker, but she has never been bent from her 


1036 


MRS. ANNIE BESANT. 


independent course. At present no woman in England of her 
age has achieved such a wide reputation for eloquence and 
scholarship, and even those who disagree with her very pro¬ 
nounced opinions can hardly fail to admire the courage with 
which she has cast behind all the happy prospects which con¬ 
formity could offer her in the society amid which she was born, 
to devote herself to the humble cause of the poor and to 
the principles which she believes true, but which can offer so 
little reward to their defender. 

Mrs. Besant was coeditor with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and 
M r. Charles Watts, of the Eree Thinker’s Text Book which has 
recently been published. Among the works which she has pro¬ 
duced and which have been received with great favor by the 
Secularists of Great Britain are her “History of the Great 
French Revolution.” “The Political Status of Woman.” 
“Auguste Comte; his Philosophy, his Religion and his Sociol¬ 
ogy.” The True Basis of Morality,” “ Civil and Religious 
Liberty.” “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” “Landlords^ 
Tenant Farmers, and Laborers.” “Giordano Bruno.” “The 
God Idea in the Revolution.” “Catholicism and Rationalism.” 
“The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.” 
“The Secular Song and Hymn Book,” etc., etc. 

Mrs. Besant was brought prominently into notice before the 
English public in the Spring and Summer of 1877, by being 
prosecuted in connection with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh for pub¬ 
lishing Dr. Charles Knowlton’s pamphlet entitled “ The Fruits 
of Philosophy,” which is an advocate of the principles of Mal- 
thus as to the evils of over-population, and which prescribes 
certain means for the prevention of too large families among the 
poor and laboring classes. The laws of England discountenance 
everything of this kind and the publishers were arrested for 
issueing obscene literature. The trial was held in “The High 
Court of Justice,” Queen’s Bench Division, when Mrs. Besant 
and Mr. Bradlaugh ably defended themselves. Mrs. Besant 
especially distinguished herself by the learned and powerful 
defense she made. Her appeals in favor of the poor, the female 
operatives and the working classes were eloquent and touching. 

Although it was shown that the pamphlet contained nothing 
more objectionable than what is presented in various medical 


MBS. ANNIE BESANT 


1037 


works. Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant were found guilty and 
a sentence was pronouced against them of a fine of £200 each 
and imprisonment of six months. A stay of proceedings was 
obtained and an application filed by the defendants for a new 
trial. At the present writing it is not known what the result 
of the same will be. In the meantime Mrs. Besant continues 
her able lectures in various parts of England, which are largely 
attended by her admiring friends. 

The lengthy address referred to, made in defense of herself 
and Mr. Bradlaugh, will long be remembered as the most able 
argument in favor of mothers retaining the control of their 
own persons, especially so far as the propagation of offspring 
and the number of children they shall bear, that has ever been 
presented. Her remarks upon this question were advanced and 
a trifle startling to very conservative people, but they were 
eminently correct, and should be familiar to every adult person 
in the United Kingdom, as well as in America. It must be 
admitted that Mrs. Besant is one of the ablest females of the 
present time. The boldness and clearness of her arguments, 
the earnestness and purity of her character are alike worthy of 
admiration and of being a guidance to others. 


1038 


SOHUENE MANN-POTT. 


SCHUENEMANN-POTT. 

This indefatigable Freethinker was born in Hamburg, Ger¬ 
many, April 5, 1826. His parents moved to a small village in 
Hesse-Cassel in 1836, where they lived in very moderate circum¬ 
stances, compelling them to apprentice him to a baker. When 
nearly despairing of his ever being able to indulge in his well- 
nigh irrepressible taste for letters, an old teacher of his, then 
a high church dignitary in Cassel, came to his relief, and suc¬ 
ceeded in persuading his father to liberate him from the bakery, 
so that he might continue his studies. 

In 1840 he was admitted to the celebrated “ Gymnasium ” at 
Cassel, and in 1845 successfully passed the examination and went 
to the University. He studied for two years and a half at 
Marburg and Halle, giving theology his most thorough atten¬ 
tion, with the fixed intent of enabling himself to combat it. 
He then preached often, until prevented on account of his 
“ heresies.” 

At this juncture the “Freie Gemeinden ” had been estab¬ 
lished in Germany. He joined the organization, and in 1847 
received a call as speaker to Nordhausen. In the very next 
year, however, he was expelled from Prussia, doubtless as one 
of “ the intellectual malefactors ” which absolutism and tyranny 
so deeply hate. But on the first of the very next month (April), 
after the revolution in Berlin, he returned and took the entire 
charge of the Free Congregation in Nordhausen. 

During the remainder of “ the revolutionary year ” (1848) he 
took part in the Democratic agitation, for which, in December, 
he was tried for high treason, but was finally acquitted. From 
January, 1849, to April, 1850, he was speaker in Halberstadt, and 
was there adopted by a Prussian nobleman, Baron von Pott, in 
order to insure him against another expulsion. Afterwards he 
was speaker in Guedlinburg until November, 1851, when he 
married, and whence he was called to Luebeck, where he edited 
a monthly paper, which was soon suppressed. In July, 1854, he 
moved with his family to America. 


SCHUENEMANN-POTT. 


1039 


After lecturing a few weeks in the Brooklyn Atlienasum, he 
received a call as speaker to Philadelphia, where he settled on 
New Year’s day, 1855, and lived and worked for more than 
sixteen years, publishing his Monthly there for most of that 
time. During his stay in Philadelphia he made many lecturing 
tours through all the Eastern, Middle and Western States. 

In 1871, following a call, he removed to San Francisco and 
took charge of the Society which he had established there a 
year before. Here he has lived and worked ever since, upheld 
by a flourishing Radical congregation. After publishing his 
Monthly for twenty-one years, a few months ago he combined 
it with a Weekly — “Der Werker”—of which he is editor and 
co-proprietor. 

He is also one of the Vice-Presidents of the “Free Religious 
Association,” as well as of the “National Liberal League,” and 
his name is a tower of special strength to German Liberalism, 
and through it to the general Freethought of this country and 
the world. 


1040 


SCHOPENHAUER. 


SCHOPENHAUER/ 


Arthur Schopenhauer was born at Dantzic, Feb. 22nd, 178b. 
His family were of Dutch extraction, but had long settled in 
this ancient Eeichstadt. His parents made many journeys dur¬ 
ing his youth, to places of interest, he always accompanying 
them. The education he thus gained was an additional induce¬ 
ment for these trips, and one his father held as by no means 
least important. Above all, he was anxious his son should have 
cosmopolitan training, see everything, judge with his own eyes, 
and be free from those prejudices that too fatally doom “home¬ 
keeping youth” to “homely wits.” Arthur ever expressed himself 
thankful for this inestimable advantage ; it exercised great 
influence upon his life, his character, and his philosophy. His 
travels brought him into contact at an early age with some of 
the best minds of the time. As a child he was acquainted with 
many celebrities, such as Baroness Stael, Klopstock, Reimarus, 
Madame Chevalier, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton. 

In his youth he showed a strong inclination for the study of 
philosophy, and entreated his father to grant him the happiness 
of a collegiate education, a request that met with stern refusal. 
However as time went on, and he saw this yearning was no 
passing fancy, he condesended to give it a more serious con¬ 
sideration, especially as the testimony of the masters endorsed 
Arthur’s prayers. He almost yielded; but the thought of the 
poverty too often attendant on a votary of the muses, was so 
repugnant to the life plans he had formed for his only son 
that he determined on a last resort to divert the boy from his 
purpose. He took refuge in strategem to effect what he was 
too just to accomplish by force. He brought the lad’s desires 
into conflict by playing off his love of traveling, and his eager¬ 
ness to visit his dear young friend Gregoire, against his longing 
to study philosophy. He put this alternative; either to enter 

1 The biographies of several are here inserted which properly belong 
in Part III, but which were unobtainable when tha t was completed. 


SCHOPENHAUER. 


1041 


a high school, or to accompany his parents upon a journey of 
some years’ duration, planned to embrace France, England and 
Switzerland. If he chose the latter he was to renounce all 
thought of an academical career, and to enter business on re¬ 
turning to Hamburg. It was a hard condition to impose on a 
boy of fifteen, but the plot had been well laid. The lad could 
not withstand the inducement, he decided in favor of travel, 
and turned his back upon learning, as he deemed, forever. 

The tour included Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany 
and England, and lasted over two years. True to his promise, 
on his return he entered a merchant’s office, as the beginning of 
a life-long mercantile career. A few months after, lie had the 
misfortune to lose his father, who fell from an attic window 
into the canal. 

Sometime afterward he went to Gothe where he remained 
but a few months engaged in academic studies. On leaving 
Gothe he repaired to Weimar and for two years applied himself 
arduously to the study of Cons: itutional History, Natural His¬ 
tory, Mineralogy, Physics, Bod.uy and the History of the Cru¬ 
sades. He also found time to attend lectures on Astronomy, 
Meteorology, Physiology, Ethnology, and Jurisprudence. 

In 1811 he went to the University of Berlin, and attended the 
lectures of Fichte on Philosophy, besides attending lectures on 
Experimental Chemistry, Magnetism and Electricity, Ornithol¬ 
ogy, Ampliibiology, Ichthyology, Domestic Animals, and Norse 
Poetry. It was Fichte’s fame that drew Schopenhauer to Ber¬ 
lin, but his “reverence a priori’ soon gave place to contempt 
and gibes. His disparaging opinion of Fichte has been quoted 
as a proof of conceit, but passages in his works prove that it 
did not spring from mere arrogance. It is not denied that his 
nature was proud and sensitive. But he was also sincere, 
thoughtful and freedom-loving. He knew he had genius, that 
he was no ordinary man, and he acknowledged it with his usual 
sincerity of speech. 

Among the friends of young Schopenhauer Goethe stood 
foremost in his esteem. “ Goethe educated me anew,” he said, 
and indeed, excepting Schiller, there was no one to whom this 
mighty spirit became so stimulating, or on whom his influence 
proved so beneficial. 


1042 


SCHOPENHAUER. 


The great work on which Schopenhauer rested his reputation 
Is, “ Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” which in some sense 
indicates that transition of the European mind from monothe¬ 
istic to a pantheistic view of the universe which began with 
Giordano Bruno, and of which the end is not yet. In attempt¬ 
ing by his philosophy to give a rational account of the uni¬ 
verse, he represents the cause as Will. “ The world itself,” to 
borrow Mr. Oxenford’s condensation of Schopenhauer’s princi¬ 
ple, “is one enormous Will constantly rushing into life.” 

Will is the condition of all existence, sentient and insen¬ 
tient. “Others,” he proudly says, “have asserted the Will’s 
freedom, I prove its omnipotence.” 

The Will recognized by Schopenhauer as the basis of Being 
must be a Will to Live, and the question immediatly arises 
whether this Will be a good one or a bad one. He holds with 
the Indian and Singhalese schools of Buddhism (northern 
Buddhism seems to teach otherwise) that desire is the root of 
all evil, and that all desire may be reduced to the affirmation 
of the Will to Live. By suppressing desire, we suppress evil, 
but we suppress existence also. The whole world therefore 
“lieth in wickedness;” it is a world that ought never to have 
been. No foundation is left for his universe but a blind unin¬ 
telligent force, which could not reasonably be an object of rev¬ 
erence. No religion consequently remains, except that of sim¬ 
ple philanthropy and self-denial. 

Although a Necessarian, he would not concur that “ man is 
a creature of circumstances,” but would agree with Mr. Mill 
that our character is formed by circumstances, and that our 
desires do much to shape those circumstances, and that, “our 
will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our 
future habits or capabilities of willing.” 

“ When a man ceases to draw an egotistic destination 
between himself and others, and takes as much part in their 
sorrows as in his own, it naturally follows that such an one 
recognizing his own self in all being, must regard the endless 
griefs of all living as his own, and thus appropriate to himself 
the sorrows of the whole world. He apprehends the whole, 
seizes its being, acknowledges the nullity of all struggle, and 
his cognition becomes the quietus of Will. Will now turns 


SCHOPENHAUER. 


1043 


away from life, man attains to the state of voluntary renuncia¬ 
tion, to resignation, to negation of the will to live. The phe¬ 
nomenon by which this is shown, the aversion to the world, to 
the Will to live, is the transition from virtue to asceticism.” 
As before remarked his ethics are little else than a re-statement 
of Buddhism. 

The Pessimism of Schopenhauer may be traced largely to 
his peculiar constitution—a nature proud, sensitive, and touched 
with the spirit of genius. The common-place people and their 
shallow conventionalities, whether in customs, laws or religion, 
excited his disgust and anger. The Lilliputs did not fail to 
sting him and thus keep his wrath aflame. The energies of 
this great mind were comparitively lost, because of the meta¬ 
physical method he employed to explain the problem of the 
universe. Had he devoted his immense powers in the use of 
the scientific method he would have been a star in the intellect¬ 
ual heavens of the first magnitude. His name will, however, 
be cherished among the sages of earth, if for nothing else but 
his sincerity. 

In the cemetery of Frankfort-on the-Main is a grave stone 
of black Belgian granite, half hidden by evergreen shrubs. It 
bears this inscription: “Arthur Schopenhauer, no more.” 
neither date nor epitaph. The great man who lies there had 
himself ordained this. He desired no fulsome inscription on 
his tomb; he wished to be recorded in his works, and when his 
friend Dr. Gwinner once asked where he desired to be buried, 
he replied, “ No matter where; posterity will find me, ” 


1044 


LESSING, 


LESSING. 


Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the son of John Gottfried and 
Justina Salome Feller Lessing, first saw the light in the small 
town of Kamenz, Jan. 22. 1729. His mother was the daughter 
of the pastor primarius of Kamenz, to whose place her husband 
succeeded. Thus Gotthold was descended on both sides from a 
theological and ecclesiastical family. At the age of eight years 
the boy entered the city school of Kamenz, which he attended 
for several years. 

At the age of thirteen he pursued his studies at the gram¬ 
mar school in Meissen, and thence after four years he entered 
the University of Leipsic in September, 1746. His admission as 
academical citizen took place on the same day on which, twenty 
years later, another youth for whom he was destined to prepare 
the way, was matriculated as a Leipsic student, namely, John 
Wolfgang Goethe. It was here that he wrote his drama, “The 
Young Scholar,” which met with very flattering approval by the 
public. The study of literature in general and the practical 
culture of the histrionic art were the aims of his highest 
ambition. He consequently wrote plays for the stage, and was 
delighted to witness their performance. 

Germany was without a national literature, and without a 
national love of or aspiration for the German Drama. All was 
French or English. He felt the stirrings of genius, which bade 
him struggle for such reform as would create a natiom l litera¬ 
ture and a national drama. No writer ever roused up Germans 
so thoroughly from the conceit of their scholarship and the 
unfruitful tendencies of their literature as he. 

The episodes of his life we have not time to trace; it is suffi¬ 
cient for our present purpose to call attention to the success of 
his labors and the freedom-loving spirit he cherished. His prin¬ 
cipal writings are Letters on Literature, Miss Sara Sampson, 
Minna von Barnhelm, Emilia Galotti, Nathan the Wise, the 
Education of the Human Kace and his Laocoon. These works, 
most of which are so well known, have immortalized the mem- 


LESSING. 


1045 


ory of Lessing. Goethe said, “ Lessing wished to abnegate the 
title of a genius, but his enduring works testify against him- 
self.” 

We are interested to know what was his religion and moral 
character. His biographer, Adolf Starr, remarked of him, that 
“ his love of truth ” was indeed the passion of his soul, and he 
strove after it with a singleness and simplicity of purpose that 
extorted admiration from his adversaries. His nature was free 
from the faintest taint of the partisan or the theorist. He was 
everywhere the high-minded as well as the broad-minded man 
of letters. ‘ I hate,’ he says, ‘from the bottom of my heart, all 
who wish to found sects.’ He was at once the champion of 
tolerance and humanity. He pointed out the barbarous cruelty 
of the Christian judges, the theologians whose sentence against 
the heretic, even after he had professed repentance and prom¬ 
ised amendment, amounted to this: ‘Off with his head firs.! 
we can see about the amendment afterwards, if God wills.’” 

His judgments on the nature of religion are exceedingly 
liberal and wise. He says: “Only a misapprehended religion 
can remove us from the Beautiful; and that religion is true and 
rightly understood which everywhere brings us back to the Beau¬ 
tiful!” 

Lessing was a Freethinker. “ What is more necessary,” he 
asks, “than to be convinced of one’s belief? and what is more 
impossible than conviction without previous investigation ? Let 
it not be alleged that the examination of ones own religion is 
sufficient; that it is not necessary to seek in other religions the 
marks of divinity when they have already been discovered in 
the accepted form. Let it not be said that if the right way lias 
already been found, there is no need of taking the trouble 
about the wrong ways. These are not learned by that, but by 
these.” On one occasion, in a controversy with G5tze, he says 
of himself, that he had long regarded it his duty to test with 
his own eyes “ what may be authentic in the faith of Chris¬ 
tians.” His apostrophe to Luther gives us some insight into 
his spirit: “O, Luther! noble, misapprehended man! And by 
none more misapprehended than by the short-sighted bigots, 
who, with their shoes in their hands, saunter, clamorous but 
indifferent, along the way first trodden by thee! Thou hast 


1046 


LESSING. 


freed us from the yoke of tradition; who will free us from the 
yoke of the letter?” 

In a discussion with Gotze Lessing laid down the following 
ten propositions as incontrovertible:— 

1. The Bible obviously contains more than belongs to 
religion. 

2. It is mere hypothesis that the Bible is equally infallible 
as regards this excess. 

3. The letter is not the spirit, and the Bible is not religion. 

4. Consequently, objections to the letter and to the Bible are 
not objections to the spirit and to religion. 

5. There was also a religion before there was a Bible. 

6. Christianity existed before the evangelists and apostles 
had written. Some time elapsed before the first of them wrote, 
and a very considerable time before the whole canon was 
completed. 

7. However much, therefore, may depend upon these writings, 
the whole truth of the Christian religion cannot possibly rest 
upon them. 

8. If there was a period when Christianity had taken posses¬ 
sion of many sonls, and when, nevertheless, not a letter of 
what has come down to us was written, then it must be possi¬ 
ble that all which the evangelists and apostles have written 
might be lost, and yet the religion taught by them would 
abide. 

9. Religion is not true because the evangelists and apostles 
taught it; but they taught it because it is true. 

10. By its (religion’s) inner truth the scriptures must be 
interpreted; and no traditions or transmitted records can give 
it inner truth if it has none. 

It was most natural for so liberal a mind to burst forth 
with—“O, out upon the man who claims, Almighty God! to be 
a preacher of thy word, and yet so impudently asserts that In 
order to attain Thy purposes there was only one way in which 
it pleased Thee to make Thyself known to him! O, out upon 
the divine who, with the exception of this one way which he 
sees, flatly denies all other ways because he does not see them! 
Gracious God, let me never become so orthodox, in order that 
I may never be so presumptuous!” 


LESSING. 


1047 


“ You do not know the Christians; 

You will not know them. ’Tis this people’s pride 
Not to be men, but to be Christians. Even 
What of humane their founder felt, and taught, 

And left to savor their fond superstition, 

They value, not because it is humane, 

Lovely, and good for man; they prize it only 
Because ’twas Christ who taught it; Christ who did it." 

When he came to die, he did not wish the presence of clergy¬ 
men. When it was told him that the rector of St. Sulpice had 
molested with admonitions the last hours of Yoitaire, he said 
to his friend, “ When you see that I am about to expire , call the 
notary that I may declare that I die in none of the prevailing 
religions” He died Feb. 15, 1780, as he lived, like a philoso¬ 
pher. 

The following lines were dedicated to him by his best friend 
Eliza Reimarus:— 

“lam the truth! and here is Lessing’s grave. 

As suns go down, so sank he to his rest 
In fullest splendor, and lights other worlds. 

Yet as the sun, in his eternal course, 

The seed-corn opens, which, with thousand fruits 
Its blessings scatters to infinitude, 
go he too, in thy realm! And till this realm 
In God’s Wide Universe shall be but one, 

I watch here by this urn, and gather in 

The oaths of those who him their brother called, 

And know that myriads on myriads 
Are scattered even now in every land, 

To arm themselves against you and your power ; 

Yet ye who mourn around your Lessing’s dust, 

If all your tears are not to be grimaces, 

Then swear in earnest, on his ashes swear, 

For truth and manhood’s sacred right, like him, 

In spite of Prejudice, and Prince, and Priest, 

With pure and dauntless heroism to fight, 

Till God shall call you to the realm of Truth.” 


1048 


THOMAS HERTTELL. 


THOMAS HERTTELL. 

This able and courageous Freethinker—a Judge of the Marine 
Court of New York, and a member of the New York Legisla¬ 
ture-made himself famous in his day, and earned for himself 
the high esteem of posterity by his strong and successful advo¬ 
cacy of simple justice for the oppressed of both sexes. 

His Essays in favor of certain much-needed reforms are even 
now highly prized by our foremost Liberals, who look upon him 
as one of the great pioneers of recent American Eeform. 

As far back as the year 1819 he published his “ Expose of the 
Evil Effects of Intemperate Drinking and a Plea for Total 
Abstinence,” the first essay on that subject in the city of New 
York, and for which he was censured and abused by the clergy, 
This pamphlet was published by order of “The New York 
Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement,” and 
presents powerful arguments against what was then a prevalent 
and even fashionable vice. The Judge declares it as his solemn 
conviction that “probably no single cause tends so much to 
the debasement and demoralization of the human family as 

the intemperate use of ardent drink.In relation to 

poverty and vice, it may be emphatically styled the cause of 
causes. . . . And it is truly mortifying that candor demands 
the acknowledgement that our country is distinguished among 
the nations most adicted to intemperate drinking.” He quotes 
John Adams to the same effect. His prophecy of the terrible 
national effect of all this has veritably come to pass! His 
proposed remedy, alas! has never been tested. 

Another able essay of his was “The Demurrer,” controvert¬ 
ing the justice and the sound policy of the law as it then stood 
in relation to the incompetency of persons who did net believe 
in future punishment to testify as witnesses in courts. The 
Judge exhibited with great force the inherent absurdity of this 
law, inasmuch as it made the proposed witness fully competent 
to testify as to his or her own competency. He showed that the 
dishonest and unscrupulous, having an interest at stake or a 


THOMAS HERTTELL. 


1049 


purpose to serve, would be almost sure to profess a creed of 
the legal length, breadth and thickness to answer his purpose, 
while the honest doubter and unbeliever would speak the truth 
and be shut from the witness-stand, often defeating the ends of 
justice. 

About the same time the Judge also published an essay 
against the compulsory Sunday laws, so far as they compelled 
the observance of Sunday as a religious dogma or ceremony, 
but not objecting to civil Sunday or rest-day as a humane and 
sanitary institution and public convenience. 

He still published another essay, exhibiting the great wrong 
suffered by many married women in not having any right of 
control over their own property, whether it came to them by 
inheritance, gift, or from their own industry and toil, and in 
their not having the right to carry on an independent business 
of their own when this might be necessary or desirable. The 
position of a married woman at that time who was so unfor¬ 
tunate as to have a drunken, worthless, or very depraved hus¬ 
band was often most deplorable. The Judge urged a radical 
reform in the laws relating to married women. This essay was 
republished in 1867 by order of the will of his wife under the 
title “ Remarks Comprising in Substance Judge Herttell’s Argu¬ 
ment in the House of Assembly of the State of New York, in 
the Session of 1837, in support of the Bill to Restore to Married 
Women The Right of Property, as guaranteed by the Constitu¬ 
tion of this State. New York, 1839.” 

In the year 1832 he was elected a member of the Legislature 
from the city of New York. It was the year in which Andrew 
Jackson was reelected President. It was a very important 
election, and the Judge was put on to conciliate what was called 
the Fanny Wright or Workingmen’s Party. Many of this party 
looked upon the Judge as not sufficiently radical, while the 
Conservatives regarded him as too radical and destructive. He 
was elected that year, and reelected in 1833 and 1834. During 
these three terms he urged the measures mentioned in the 
essays referred to, and if the memory of his surviving friends 
serves them rightly, they were all carried through during these 
terms. The religious opinions of witnesses was no longer 
inquired into. The compulsory Sunday laws and customs were 


1050 


THOMAS HEETTELL, 


materially relaxed. The relation of married women to the pos¬ 
session and control of their own property, however, was only 
partially changed until the year 1848, when the provisions of 
law on that subject were greatly extended. 

He distinguished himself in the State Assembly by several 
able speeches, among which was one in favor of excluding from 
the Constitution all recognition of religion, and the removal of 
chaplains and religious services from the Legislative Halls. 

The Judge figured in, and, we believe was President of a 
Convention of Infidels held in New York more than thirty 
years ago, at which Robert Owen was present in person and 
power, and the memory of which is still held fresh and green 
by the few survivors. 

Herttell was looked upon by men of all parties as an able 
and upright dispenser of justice, rather inclined to look beyond 
legal technicalities to natural equity. More than one of our 
city ordinances which were contrary to these principles were 
nullified and set aside by his decisions. Both as a private 
citizen and as a member of the Legislature he was an earnest 
and efficient laborer in many other reforms, such as the 
abolition of imprisonment for debt, a lien law for laborers on 
buildings, and the exemption of a certain amount of property 
from seizure under execution for debt. 

He lived to about the age of eighty-seven, and died with 
philosophic resignation. His religious views, which were emi¬ 
nently broad and liberal, resting on the materialistic order of 
natural phenomena, served him well in life, and abandoned 
him not in death. Death ! it is not so. He lives to-day in 
memory and influence in the very hearts of our best reforms 
and reformers, and especially in those of our most daring and 
hardest-working Freethinkers — a very well-spring of hope and 
cheer and faith in the good time ever coming. 


CHARLES KNOWLTON. 


1051 


CHARLES KNOWLTON, M. D. 

"When Goethe was at the height of his eminence, and when he 
was familiar with all the literary celebrities of Europe, he said 
he had been acquainted with many persons who had lived and 
died only known in their own small circle, who had more 
genius, and minds more profound, and knowledge more exten¬ 
sive than those who had attained the greatest honors of fame 
and consideration. Charles Knowlton, the subject of this brief 
sketch, was an instance of this kind. It is not enough to pos¬ 
sess genius and intellect; there must also be a field in which 
to display them. Fortune located Dr. Knowlton in a rural 
district, tied him to a laborious profession, and kept him nearly 
all his life employed in providing for the need of his family. 
Thus a mind that was capable of the highest metaphysical 
thought, was kept in the routine of constant occupation that 
prevented him from pursuing studies and sciences which he 
was peculiarly adapted to illustrate. 

Dr. Knowlton was born in the town of Templeton, Massachu¬ 
setts, on the 10th of May, 1800. His father was a New England 
farmer of frugal and industrious habits, of good information, 
and a man of more than common intellectual ability. By 
assiduous labor he supported and brought up his family, and 
by close economy was able to lay up something for old age or 
a “wet day but he had not the means to give other educa¬ 
tion to his children than that which could be obtained by two 
or three winters’ attendance at a common school. This was all 
the opportunity which young Knowlton ever enjoyed, but such 
was his natural capacity, such his quickness of acquirement, his 
power of assimilation, his retentive memory, that he gained in 
this restricted manner more useful knowledge than, aside from 
the dead languages, is generally attained in a college course. 
While thus maturing and furnishing his mind, he was working 
all the year except the winter on his father’s farm, and so con¬ 
tinued till he reached his eighteenth year. 


CHARLES KNOWLTON. 


ic;,3 

At this time his health, which had always been delicate, 
became so impaired that he was unable longer to perform agri¬ 
cultural labor. He was under the charge of several physicians 
without much benefit, and this led him to turn his attention to 
medicine, and he commenced a course of studies with doctor 
Charles Wilder, of Templeton and made good progress. Thus, 
studying medicine, and undergoing medical treatment, he 
reached the age of twenty-one. At this time the employment 
of electricity was recommended in his case, and in order to 
avail himself of its full employment he became a tempory 
resident in the house of Richard Stuart, of Winchendon, Massa¬ 
chusetts, who was expert in the management of electrical 
machines, and also a manufacturer of them. Mr. Stuart was a 
man of uncommon intellectual faculties, an excellent reasoner 
and observer, and a bold thinker. He dared to question the 
divinity of the Christian religion, the inspiration of the Bible, 
and the whole theological creed of the various religious sects. 
Young Knowlton had been brought up in the odor of so-called 
sanctity, and the scepticism and unbelief of Mr. Stuart were at 
first terrifying to him ; but reflection, examination, and the 
conversation of his host compelled him to surrender the views 
in which he had been reared. Another event of great impor¬ 
tance occurred to him while he was at the house of Mr. Stuart. 
There was in it a Miss Stuart whose beauty and various accom¬ 
plishments, whose sweet voice, skill in music, deft housewifery, 
and agreeable manners led him with her to the matrimonial 
altar. But his medical studies were still uncompleted, and he 
found some difficulty in procuring the means for carrying them 
on and paying for medical lectures. He persevered, however, 
and in 1824 he graduated at the Medical College of Hanover 
New Hampshire. 

He went immediately into practice, and soon became known 
as a physician of uncommon resources and ability. But much 
as he delved in the works relating to his profession, his busy 
and acute brain was engaged in exploring things beyond mere 
physiology and the treatment of disease. He engaged deeply in 
metaphysical thought, and the fruit of his studies was the com¬ 
position of an octavo volume entitled “The Elements of Modern 
Materialism.” This work, considering the time when it was 


CHARLES KNOWLTON. 


1053 


written and the circumstances under which it was composed, 
was one of the most extraordinary which bad appeared on that 
subject. In it he undertakes to solve the mystery of thought, 
and to show that the brain is the organ and source of all intel¬ 
lectual operations. He explains sensation and the various 
faculties of the mind, and shows that the brain has a similar 
agency in their evolution as the liver in the secretion of bile. 
In the course of the book there is a vast amount of useful and 
physiological information, and a great deal of acute argument 
and sound reasoning. As a pioneer in works of that character 
it is still, notwithstanding later discoveries, an excellent one 
for perusal and reference, and it exhibits Dr. Knowlton as a 
thinker of the first force and order. 

But whatever might be the value of th e work, and however 
much it might exalt its author in the opinion of men of seme, 
it aroused against him the army of bigots, and led to attempts 
to deprive him of professional business and make him a pariah 
in society. Besides, it also entangled him in the meshes of the 
law. He undertook to sell his work, and because he did so 
during a journey made for that purpose, he was prosecuted 
under some statute about “peddling books,” and the character 
of the work provoked against him the relentless intolerance of 
the magistrate who sat on his case, and who availed himself 
of all his power in the way of fine and imprisonment. 

After many vicissitudes, and after practicing in several towns, 
he settled in 1835, in Ashfield, Massachusetts. Here, in spite of 
religious bigotry and the odium theologicum, his great medical 
skill procured him a wide-spread and lucrative practice. But the 
activity of his brain and his progressive ideas led him to pub¬ 
lish another book —a book destined to procure prosecutions not 
only in this country, but in Europe. This work was a small 
treatise entitled “The Fruits of Philosophy, or Companion of 
Young Married People;” (sustantially the same work for whose 
publication in England Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant lately 
underwent a lengthy trial). Robert Dale Owen had published 
his “Moral Physiology,” and considered the question of over¬ 
population, and the burden to poor people of large families. Dr. 
Knowlton perceived the case was not adequately met, and applied 
his mind to it. 


1054 


CHARLES KNOWLTON. 


He discovered a means of limiting offspring which was 
entirely within the control of the mother, which was not only 
healthy in its application but beneficial, attended by no sacrifice 
in the process of reproduction, and which would enable parents 
to limit their children to the number which they could educate 
and support. He set forth these facts in his book, he filled it 
with useful physiological and scientific information, conveyed 
in a chaste and appropriate manner, and was only actuated by 
philanthropic and benevolent motives. But this little medical 
treatise drew down upon him new prosecutions and persecutions. 
While on a visit at Boston he was prosecuted, convicted, fined 
and imprisoned for thirty days in jail, on the ground that he had 
published an indecent and immoral work. 

He was also prosecuted in Franklin county, Mass., where he 
resided. All the the artillery of the Church militant was arrayed 
against him, and the flunkies of bigotry used their utmost 
endeavois to convict him. But he was not made of that stuff 
which wilts and yields. He made a vigorous and able defence, 
and to the credit of the jury that tried him, they refused to 
render a verdict against him. Thereafter he disposed of the 
work unmolested by prosecutions, but his rivals and enemies 
ever availed themselves of this treatise and his “Elements of 
Modern Materialism” to deprive him of business and to injure 
him. In this they were not largely successful. The sick and 
diseased had learned where to look for health and medical aid, 
and when they were racked with pain and in danger of death, 
they no longer asked about the creed of him who could relieve 
them. 

Br. Knowlton was now known throughout Franklin county, 
and had visited patients in every town in it, and also exten¬ 
sively practiced in the neighboring counties. His professional 
talents were deservedly held in very high esteem, and his 
skill in medicine was so evident that, from the good effects 
which followed his prescriptions, his life was one of incessant 
labor in order to attend to the calls which were made for his 
services. It is no flattery to say, that among the first physicians 
of Western Massachusetts, none surpassed him in medical 
skill, acumen or knowledge. In his profession he was most 
thoroughly versed, and notwithstanding his extensive ride, he 


CHARLES KNOWLTON. 


1053 


was a close and indefatigible student. His desire for medical 
improvement was great, and after a long day’s work, many is 
the time that his office lamp has burned when the other inhab¬ 
itants in. his village were asleep, and he was investigating 
some intricate case, and searching to find means to baffle and 
subdue some formidable disease. In examining a patient he was 
careful, scrutinizing and thorough. He was none of those 
physicians who hastily and heedlessly prescribe. Hence he was 
uncommonly accurate in diagnosis, or the art of distinguishing 
one disease from another. He never dealt out a medicine with¬ 
out having in his own mind a clear conception of the reason 
which induced the prescription, and of the effect which he 
expected from it. 

These habits cf close thinking and accurate observation, 
combined with his complete (so far as it can be complete) 
knowledge of the resources of medicine, made him wonderfully 
successful as a practitioner. In spite, therefore, of his known 
and never concealed heterodoxy in regard to the Bible and 
Caristianity, those qualities secured a run of business which no 
physician in Franklin county ever exceeded. He thus gained a 
position of pecuniary ease that placed him above the malice 
and spi;e of those who desired te persecute him for his adhe¬ 
rence to Freethought. But busy as he was kept by the demands 
of his profession, his active mind was not to be confined in any 
“pent-up Utica.” He was a frequent and esteemed corres¬ 
pondent of the “Boston Investigator”; he delivered public 
lectures on theology and materialism; he held a noted discus¬ 
sion on the Bible and Christianity with the Bev. Mr. Thacher, 
of Hawley, Mass.; he wrote articles for political papers, and 
was a popular speaker on political topics, always exerting him¬ 
self in favor of liberty, labor, the working man, humanity and 
progress. As a citizen he was upright, patriotic and just. In 
business transactions, no one exceeded him in strict honesty 
and the most undeviating rectitude. His adherence to truth 
was rigid and inflexible. He enjoyed society, was attached to 
his friends, and his heart ever responded to melting charity. 

He loved games of skill, and seldom found his equal in 
chess, and never in checkers. He has been known to go twenty 
miles out of his way to engage with a noted checker player, 


1056 


CHARLES KNOWLTON, 


and whenever he heard of one he was never easy till he had 
tried him. His medical office in all its appointments was the 
best in the country; his medical library was the largest, and 
his collection of books on theology, history, poetry and general 
literature was numerous and excellent. He had a taste for 
humor, and enjoyed wit as well as argument, not unfrequently 
indulging himself in humorous verse. 

Dr. Knowlton died in the town of Winchendon, Mass., on the 
night of Wednesday, Feb. 20, 1850, not having quite completed 
the fiftieth year of his age. He had for some weeks previous 
been complaining of dyspeptical symptoms, but was, for the 
most part, able to attend to his customary business, and did 
not suspect that he was afflicted with any serious disease. 
Feeling, however, that the state of his health demanded some 
respite from the fatigues and cares of his profession, he left 
Ashfield on the morning of the day before his death, and went 
to Templeton, where he spent the night and part of Wednes¬ 
day, Feb. 20th, with his father and brother. On the afternoon 
of the last mentioned day he went to Winchendon, walking the 
distance of a mile on his way. On reaching the house of Mrs. 
Simonds, his wife’s sister, he only complained of fatigue, and 
pronounced his health better than it had been. He sat up 
conversing cheerfully till ten o’clock in the evening, when he 
retired to bed. About midnight Mrs. Simonds, hearing a noise 
in his room, hastened to it, and found him partly rolled over 
on his face, and dead. He undoubtedly died of angina 'pectoris. 
For years he had been troubled with such disturbances of the 
heart as often to oblige him to get out of his carriage and lie 
by the roadside till he was somewhat recovered of them. For 
several of the last years of his life he had no recurrence of 
these attacks, and both he and his friends flattered themselves 
that they had only been functional instead of organic affections 
of the heart. These hopes were fallacious. The disease form¬ 
erly so feared, had only paused to make its next assault a fatal 
one, and Dr. Knowlton was cut off with that suddenness which 
attends cardiac complaints. 

A wife, two sons and a daughter survived him, and before his 
own death he had lost one son and a daughter. 


MICHAEL C. KERR. 


1057 


MICHAEL C. KERR 


Was born at Titusville, Crawford County, in Western Pennsyl¬ 
vania, on the 15th day of March, 1826. His parents were in 
moderate circumstances, respected among their neighbors for 
their frugality, and regarded as among the most enterprising 
citizens of the place. Their want of means made it incumbent 
upon their children, in a great measure, to hew their own for¬ 
tunes from the rough mine of a busy world. Mr. Kerr, by the 
same indomitable spirit which he displayed in after life, largely 
devoted his time to self-instruction and acquiring the means to 
complete an education and enter upon a profession which he 
had chosen as the goal of his ambition. In 1845 he graduated 
at Erie Academy, ranking high among the class of that year. 
It was while in attendance upon this Academy he formed the 
acquaintance of Miss Coover, and soon after his graduation he 
married her, the marriage upon agreement being kept a secret 
between the parties until such time as he could find a location 
and home in the West. Mr. Kerr shortly visited Louisville, 
Ky., where he devoted himself to the profession of school 
teaching for a short while, at the same time attending the Law 
University, in which he graduated as Bachelor of Laws in 1851. 
Soon after graduating, in 1852, he removed to New Albany, 
Indiana, with his wife, where he resided up to the date of his 
death, which took place, from gastric consumption, at Bock 
Alum Springs, Virginia, on the 19th day of August, 1876. 

In 1854 he was elected attorney for the city of New Albany, 
Indiana. In 1855 he was chosen Prosecuting Attorney for 
Floyd County, Indiana. In 1856 he was chosen to represer t 
Floyd County in the Indiana Legislature. In 18C2 he was 
chosen for Supreme Court reporter by the people. In 1864, 
1866, 1868 and 1870, he was elected to represent the 3d Congres¬ 
sional District of Indiana in Congress. In 1874, he was elected 
to Congress, and by the House of Representatives its Presiding 
Officer, which position he held at the time of his death. 


MICHAEL C. KERB. 


358 

Mr. Kerr was a forcible and logical speaker, but disdained all 
mere eloquence. He was a man of almost unparalleled perse¬ 
verance, which was only equaled by his invariable courtesy 
and politeness. We have the clear testimony of an intimate 
friend of his to the effect that he was not only, in general 
terms, a Freethinker and Skeptic, but an unmistakable Infidel 
and Materialist, though he used to say but little about his 
views and belief. His library was well stocked with Infidel 
books, which he freely lent. 

“Michael C. Kerr died as he had lived —a polite, kind, 
courteous, obliging friend,—and an Infidel.” This is the literal 
testimony of a gentleman who knew him well, who conscien¬ 
tiously opposed him in politics, who “stumped” his district 
against him and thereby came nearly defeating him, who, how¬ 
ever, never dreamed of breathing an unkind word against 
him personally, but remained his warm and welcome personal 
friend up to the day of his death. 

Another gentleman testifies that Mr. Kerr was entirely outside 
of the petty grooves of the average mental machine, and that 
he had attained the rare height of being able to think, and 
when occasion absolutely required it, to speak right out for 
himself, as was amply proven by repeated interviews, which a 
country minister had with the Speaker during his last days. 
The Rev. Mr. Harris was a red-hot gospeler, who had never 
labored with any sinners but those of the ordinary kind. He 
saw here an opportunity for fame and profit. To convert 
Kerr was his one great object and dearest triumph, even at the 
expense of all the kindly delicacy which ought to surround as 
with a halo the final hours of every human being. 

To this vulgar and pertinacious man’s question, “Do you 
believe in the other life ?” Mr. Kerr replied that most unques¬ 
tionably he did. But when he asked him if he believed in the 
scheme of salvation laid down in the code of those who pro¬ 
fessed to follow Jesus Christ, Mr. Kerr replied that he did not. 
The minister here broke out into holy horror at this statement 
from a man so near death. He begged permission to pray by 
the dying man’s bedside. 

He was waved back imperiously. Said Kerr, in that clear, 
concise way of his when talking from the inner, “I have 


MICHAEL C. KERR. 


1059 


thought and read much upon this subject of religion. I believe 
fully in another life, and a higher power that governs this 
through the laws of nature. I have read more upon this sub¬ 
ject than you. and I dare say have thought more, and yet you 
presume to come to me now at the end of my life and teach 
me how to die. I have no belief in the change of heart that 
comes to man impelled by a fear of death. When a man comes 
to the end of his life, he must go into the other world with the 
record of his entire past life with him. He cannot, in my 
opinion, be judged by anything else. Certainly the record of an 
upright, honest life, that has never bowed to the demands of 
intolerant bigotry, but has moved clear and free in a channel 
of its own making, cleft by its onward rush of thought, must 
weigh against the record of a bad life, that is only supposed to 
be cleansed for the next by a death-bed repentance. My con¬ 
science does not trouble me. I do not fear death. 1 shall die 
as I have lived. 31 

The minister pleaded with him, but Kerr was too weak to 
talk further. This ardent bigot did not have the tact to see 
that his every word was an irritating insult to Kerr’s intelli¬ 
gence after the above free expression of his belief. He persisted 
until one day, Kerr, exhausted by the daily calls of the minis¬ 
ter, told a friend to instruct the hotel clerk to never again 
permit that “d—d gospeler” to come near him. Now, if ever 
the recording angel dropped a tear of obliteration upon the 
record cf an oath, it was in this instance. Here was one honest 
man going to his death with his mind clear and untroubled. 
His belief was to him an earnest faith. To attempt to shake 
the peace of these last hours shows a narrowness of mind, a 
vanity, and a conceit hard to comprehend. After Kerr’s last 
order he was never disturbed. Unmoved in his calm belief that 
he should be fairly judged, he passed away without a murmur. 


10G0 


D. M. BENNETT 


D. M. BENNETT. 

Last and least comes the writer of these pages. Possibly the 
reader would not be detained with the reading of this sketch 
cf an unimportant life had not several requests been made that 
it be added to this volume. If fuller details are given in this 
case than in some others it is because the information in this 
instance is somewhat fuller than of persons of more conse¬ 
quence. It is not altogether vanity. 

D. M. Bennett was born in Springfield, New York, on the 
eastern shore of the beautiful little sheet of water called Otsego 
Lake, December 23, 1818. He should not have made his debut 
in this troublous world till February, 1819, and probably would 
not have done so had not an unlucky strain on the part of his 
mother in lifting a “ Dutch bake-oven ” brought on the event two 
months too soon. He was very small and puny as an infant 
and continued to be small for his age through childhood and 
youth. An unfavorable circumstance connected with liis infancy 
was being weaned at the a,ge of seven months. His young 
mother having at that time occasion to perform a journey 
wished to leave the little “torment” at home or with a friend, 
a decision he did not quite approve at the time and never has 
fully, since. 

His father, an honest, hard working man followed farming 
until the lad was ten years old when he moved into the village 
of Cooperstown, where the lad spent four years of hi 5 boyhood 
days and acquired such rudiments of education as are obtained 
in district schools. At the age of twelve and when he weighed 
just fifty pounds by the steelyards lie obtained a situation as 
“roll-boy” (similar to “printer’s devil”) in the printing estab¬ 
lishment of H. & E. Pliinney, who at that time were one of the 
heaviest publishing firms in the country. The “hand presses” 
were the only kind used then and they required roll-boys to 
apply the ink to the type, to wash the stereotype plates, etc. The 
lad filled this important position the best part of two years and 


D. M. BENNETT. 1061 

for tolerably faithful services received the salary of $1.50 per 
wee.c and boarded at home. A new invention at length super¬ 
seded the roll-boys and the young printer retired to private life. 

Many homes have had their family troubles. The Bennett 
family had theirs. The father and mother were not congenial 
and did not live happily, and Anally separated, the father leav¬ 
ing for another part of the state. The mother retained the 
children, the boy and two younger sisters, the youngest of whom, 
a x>retty child of seven years, died a few months later. Soon 
after this the lad obtained a position in a wool-carding estab¬ 
lishment, where he officiated a few months until he could make 
rolls which the farmer wives pronounced “first rate.” Then 
by instructions from his mother, he performed a journey*of one 
hundred miles to Berkshire county, Mass., to live with Dr. 
Barker, a brother of hers, who, when the lad was four years 
old, promised that when large enough he would take him and 
make a doctor of him. Pursuant to this promise the journey 
was made. The lad rode with a teamster, carrying a load of 
grain to Albany (sixty miles), and thence by stage. 

The uncle, when he beheld the young candidate for medical 
honors — a demure, slender lad, past fourteen, and weighing 
but seventy pounds, very naturally concluded he was a very 
small specimen of which to manufacture a doctor, and deemed 
it best, after a visit had been made, that lie return and “tarry 
in Jericho,” if not till the “beard was grown,” until at least a 
more respectable size was attained. After visiting other relatives 
in the vicinity, two Shakers from New Lebanon, N. Y., called 
to pass the night where lie was stopping. They offered to carry 
him some twenty miles to their home, helping him that far on 
his journey. He accepted the offer, and on Sept. 12, 1833, he 
arrived at their beautiful Shaker home, where he was most 
kindly received in a family of some seventy-five genial, kind- 
hearted Brethren and Sisters who lived happily on the commu¬ 
nity plan with plenty around them on every side. The entire 
Society at that time numbered seven hundred persons. Every¬ 
body seemed agreeable, and everything was lovely. After 
making a visit of ten days, the little fellow concluded he would 
like to become a Shaker and spend his days among such kind 
and happy people. He accordingly confessed his sins (not a 


1002 


D. M BENNETT. 


very black list at that time) —the requirement of all who joined 
them —and thirteen years he remained with them, acknowledg¬ 
ing the correctness of their faith and believing they were living 
more acceptably to God than any other people in the world, 
and thereby securing a higher seat in heaven than any others 
of the children of men. 

The Shakers have a peculiar religion and lead peculiar lives. 
They believe that in Ann Lee, an English married woman, the 
wife of a dissipated blacksmith, over one hundred years ago, 
Jesus Christ made his second appearance, and made known the 
true and only plan of salvation. To her was revealed that the 
fall of man, in the persons of Adam and Eve, consisted in a pre¬ 
mature and unauthorized sexual connection, and that through 
the indulgence in the j>assion of lust from that early day all 
the sin and misery which has since existed came into the world. 
She taught her followers that to become the true disciples of 
Christ they must lead virgin lives and wholly abstain from the 
pollution of the sexual embrace. Marriage is accordingly pro¬ 
hibited among them. They dance and march for worship, and 
hold all their property in common, each family by themselves. 
They are an industrious, frugal and honest people, and so far 
as religion is concerned they probably have an article that is as 
practical, as useful and as sincere as any in the world. The 
objections to them are, they are somewhat intolerant towards 
the faith of others. Their creed is narrow, and they hold that 
Nature is wrong and must be subdued and entirely overcome. 
They are Unitarians, or rather Duotarians, believing God consists 
of two persons or elements — male and female — “Power and 
Wisdom.” Jesus and “Mother Ann ” are regarded as human re¬ 
presentatives of the Father and Mother deities or principles, and 
were chosen as special messengers to bring special tidings to 
the world. It is due to that people to say, their original exclu¬ 
siveness and intolerance has become greatly modified in late 
years. The great law of evolution has been working with them 
as well as other believers in the various religious systems of 
the world. 

When young Bennett became a Shaker he wrote to his 
motiher what he had done and urged her to come and bring his 
sister with her. This she did in the following Spring. His 


D. M. BENNETT. 


10G3 


mother remained some seven years aDd then left. His sister 
left at the time ho did. The winter of 1833-4 he attended the 
Shaker school which compared favorably with ordinary schools. 
After this he was placed in the Seed Gardens, raising seeds, 
cleaning them, putting them up in papers to send over the 
country. This ho followed three years, when being some trou¬ 
bled with a lameness in one foot he was placed at shoemaking 
and learned to make many a pair of boots and shoes. 

He was a disciple of St. Crispin about four years when he 
was placed in the Medical Department, raising medical herbs 
and roots, gathering the same wild, drying, pressing, powder¬ 
ing, making extracts, ointments, syrups, pills, etc. This was an 
extensive business, and lie remained at it several years and had 
control of it. In this connection he became somewhat familiar 
with botany and chemistry. He was finally appointed physician 
to the Society. He attended no medical college nor course of 
lectures. He had the use of a very fair medical library and the 
experience of an old physician, who had been retired. Bennett 
continued this profession two years or more. The system pur¬ 
sued was the eclectic. The sick were promptly attended to, and 
the success was usually very good. They are using less medicine 
of late years than formerly, many of them believing drugs can 
be almost entirely dispensed with without the slightest injury to 
the system. 

In the Summer of 1846 a spirit of dissatisfaction and discon¬ 
tent overspread the minds of many of the young folks in the 
society, and faith in the Shaker religion had lessened. This 
feeling was shared in by Bennett, his sister, his future wife, and 
others; and on September 12, four of them chartered a carriage 
and rode to Lebanon Springs and stopped at a hotel until four 
of the Shakers went up and settled with them; a letter had been 
written to the Elders, notifying them of the steps taken. It 
was an unexpected shock to the society. 

The parting from the home and friends of so many years 
W’as a severe trial. It seemed almost like “pulling the heart¬ 
strings.” The quartette proceeded to Cooperstown, Otsego, Co., 
and stopped a few weeks with relatives. On October 19, Ben¬ 
nett was married to Mary Wicks, and his sister Letsie was also 
married to George W. Allen. The ceremony was performed 


10G4 


D. M. BENNETT. 


with b th couples at the same time, clad as they were in the 
plain Shaker garb. 

Soon after this a Mr. Byram, in the nursery business, from 
Kentucky, made a proposition that all four, yes, all five of the 
ex-Shakers, should go to Kentucky and engage with him in that 
business, giving assurance that he had the facilities for rendering 
all comfortable and prosperous. The offer seemed feasible, w*as 
accepted by the five, and the journey was performed, ending 
at Brandenberg, Ky., on the Ohio river, forty miles below Louis¬ 
ville, in November, 1846. It was a most uninviting locality. It 
was in the days of slavery, and as all parties from the North were 
viewed with suspicion, the reception the five met with was any¬ 
thing but agreeable. They found also that the representations 
made by Byram could not be fulfilled. Upon this unpleasant 
fact staring them in the face, and just as Winter was coming 
on, and wholly unacquainted as they were with the ways of 
the world, Bennett and his w T ife decided to leave that place and 
repair to Louisville. Here he soon obtained a clerkship in a 
drug store, where he remained the better part of a year. They 
commenced house-keeping upon the most frugal and economical 
plan, and saved every cent they could. 

At the termination of a year Bennett decided to start a drug 
store. With the little money he had saved, and a small sum 
the wife had received from a deceased brother’s estate, a stock 
of drugs was purchased, and the business commenced. It went 
slowly at first, but gradually improved. He conducted that store 
over eight years, engaging besides in several side operations 
and speculations, some of which proved unfortunate. In April, 
1855, he sold the drug store, and upon solicitations and proposi¬ 
tions made by relatives, he returned to New York and settled 
in Rochester, where his sister resided. He engaged with his 
brother-in-law in selling fruit trees and shrubbery for one of 
the large Rochester nurseries, in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. 
They sold largely, and would have done well, had not a heavy 
frost come upon them at a particularly unfavorab’e time — one 
November night when their trees were in transit from Dubuque 
south west, fifty miles. They froze solid, and thus $4,000 was 
lost He tried the fruit tree business again the following year, 
but with no better success. Then for four or five years he 


D. M. BENNETT. 


1065 


traveled for one of the largest seed firms in Rochester, collect¬ 
ing for sales and taking orders. 

In 1859 he removed to Cincinnati, bought a drug store, and 
commenced putting up a series of proprietary medicines, which 
he circulated through the adjoining*country. He started first 
with one wagon, adding one after another, until, when the 
war broke out, he had fifteen wagons running. “ Dr. Bennett’s 
Quick Cure, Golden Liniment, Worm Lozenges, Root and Plant 
Pills, etc., became well known in thousands of families, and 
gave uniform satisfaction. He manufactured various articles 
besides the medicines, prominent among which was a coarse 
sealing wax or cement, in sticks, for fruit jars. Of this he sold 
large quantities, manufacturing from one to three thousand 
pounds per day. He conducted a successful business for six 
years, some years realizing a profit of $10,000. 

In 1865 he sold out his entire business at a low price, but 
received cash in hand, enough to render him independent for 
life had he but put it in bonds or at interest; but thinking he 
could easily make more money he embarked in several enter¬ 
prises, all of which proved unfortunate. He put $10,000 in petro¬ 
leum and mineral lands in Tennessee, $7,500 in insurance stock, 
$4,000 in mining lands in Sonora, $4,000 in chromo-lithography, 
$2,000 in bed-spring manufacture, $5,000 in building, etc., etc. 
These and other investments proving almost total losses, had a 
most serious effect upon his finances, and the same had a very 
depressing effect upon his mind. It was far from quieting to 
the feelings to see the money made by toil and constant exer¬ 
tions slipping away by the $3,000, $5,000 and $10,000, and this 
without the power to arrest it. In the years 1865 and ’66 he 
lost fully $30,000. 

After two years of gloom he endeavored to recuperate, and 
tried a new enterprise, but it was not successful. In 1868 he open¬ 
ed a well-arranged drug store in Kansas City, but trade opening 
dull and expenses being heavy, he did not feel encouraged. In 
a few months he sold out at a heavy loss. This was done 
chiefly by persuasion of a boyhood friend in New York who 
wrote him repeatedly urging him to remove to that city and 
join him in the manufacture of brick. Bennett had tried so 
many things latterly and met failure at every turn, and regard- 


1066 


D. M. BENNETT. 


ing the brick business as substantial, and presuming liis New 
York friend had plenty of money, he concluded to join that 
friend in brick manufacture. He visited New York, spent some 
weeks in investigating the brick field, and finally jmrchased a 
piece of clay land on Long Island and started the business, but 
it is a tedious story, not worth telling — the friend was money¬ 
less, other partners were taken in, matters worked unsatisfac¬ 
torily— in short it was another failure. 

He spent a few months next as a commercial traveler, then 
started, in Rochester, a series of proprietary medicines, but with 
very moderate success. Next, receiving an offer to go to Paris, 
Ill., and conduct a drug store, he accepted the proposition and 
passed three years there rather pleasantly. After some fifteen 
months at drugs he concluded to engage in the seed business, 
raising and putting up seeds for general sales over the country. 
The first year he planted fifty acres, or contracted with a party 
to grow that amount for him, but neglect on the part of the 
contractor and extremely dry w 7 eather made the crop a short 
one and unremunerative. To carry through the original plan — 
to put up 250,000 packages of seeds —more money and partners 
were necessary; they were found, and the 250,000 lepers were 
put up, and distributed among the merchants of several adjoin¬ 
ing States. 

An incident that occurred in the Summer of 1872, may be 
mentioned. Bennett was having some ten acres of seeds put in by 
a farmer over twenty miles from Paris, and wishing to see the 
crop he hired a horse from a livery stable, which proved to be a 
very unsafe animal. He made the journey to the locality safely. 
On the following morning he mounted the horse to return 
home. After pursuing his course some two miles he v r as 
obliged to alight to open and close a set of bars; wdiile re-mount- 
ing and just while he was in the act of throwing his leg over 
the saddle — he was clumsy withal and a poor equestrian—the 
animal started suddenly and threw him to the ground and 
dragged him some distance with one foot in the stirrup. 
Whether the horse kicked him or stepped on him is not known 
but a rib was broken and he was rendered insensible for sev¬ 
eral hours. The horse ran some four miles, and had not Ben¬ 
nett’s foot fortunately left the stirrup, about as it did, he would 


D. M. BENNETT. 


10G7 


soon have been finished, and “The Truth Seeker” would not 
have been started, and this book never written. 

The following year seventy-five acres were put into seeds but 
another extremely dry season caused another short crop, In 
the Summer of that year Bennett got into a discussion on 
“prayer,” with two clergymen, which discussion was carried on 
through the local papers. The editor of one of these was unfa’r 
towards Bennett, publishing his antagonists’ articles but not his. 
This partially touched Bennett and decided him to start a 
paper of his own in which he could say what he pleased. This 
was the origin of “The Truth Seeker.” September 1, 1873, was 
the date of the first number. Twelve thousand copies were 
issued and mostly sent broadcast over the land. Considerable 
success was hoped for, but subscriptions came in slowly and it 
even seemed a matter of doubt whether the enterprise should 
be continued. He decided however to issue number two and num¬ 
ber three. Subscribers, in the meantime, steadily increased and 
it looked more and more as though the paper would live. About 
this time troubles in the seed firm had culminated. Bennett 
had labored faithfully and earnestly, but his partners evinced a 
disposition to take an advantage of him which the terms of their 
contract and the money and influence they possessed permitted 
them to exercise. They used it, and forced a dissolution, thus 
wronging Bennett out of two years of hard labor and $2,500. 
Perhaps this was as well as could be expected from Christian 
partners. The business is still continued. 

Finding that the necessity for remaining at Paris no longer 
existed, and realizing that it was not the best point whence to 
issue “ The Truth Seeker,” he looked about for a better location ; 
the result was he decided to remove to the metropolis of the 
country — New York City. So number four of the little monthly 
was issued in Paris and number five in New York with sixteen 
pages in place of the previous eight. At the commencement of 
Yol. II. it became a semi-monthly and at the beginning of Yol. 
III., in January, 1876, it became a weekly. 

It is unnecessary to detail the struggles and discouragements 
that have attended the existence of “The Truth Seeker” since 
its beginning. With the small capital it had to back it, it has 
many t'mes, from week to week, been a question of life or 




1033 D. M. BEllKETT. 

death with the little unpopular, fearless sheet. More than once 
it has been a conundrum, difficult to solve, where the money 
was coming from on Saturday night wherewith to pay the 
printers and other employees. But the Liberals of the country, 
though not remarkably enthusiastic, have been kind and appre¬ 
ciative. They have sent in funds just about fast enough to 
keep the little struggler from dying. In fact, although since its 
birth the severest financial depression has o'erspread the land 
that has ever been known, and although scores and hundreds of 
papers in the time, and many of them started with large sums 
of money, have, in the familiar language of the day, gone 
“where the woodbine twineth,” “The Truth Seeker” has 
steadily advanced and steadily gained in circulation. With a 
capital not exceeding $1,000 this has been accomplished and 
over 8,000 stereotype and electrotype plates have been gotten 
up, and more than one hundred different books and pamphlets, 
large and small, have been published. 

Hard work, long days, and strict economy have had some¬ 
thing to do with this, and the struggle is not yet over. Much 
similar work is laid out for the future. By the following adver¬ 
tising pages it will be seen that ease and quiet is hardly expect¬ 
ed by Bennett for some time to come. 

With the opening of Yol. V., Januarj^ 1878, “The Truth 
Seeker” will contain sixteen pages, affording larger space for 
correspondents and contributors, and more scientific matter. It 
will then be the largest Liberal paper published in the world, 
and much the cheapest in proportion to reading matter fur¬ 
nished. The publisher hopes the circulation of the paper may 
be largely increased, and that the Liberal element of the coun¬ 
try may feel interested in sustaining it generously. It is his 
intention, in the paper and in the books which he sends forth, 
to make the prices as reasonable as possible, hoping that this 
feature may be appreciated by the Liberal public. 

In addition to editorial labors, Bennett has delivered a few 
lectures. These, and some of his essays and leading editorials, 
have been made up into a volume of seven hundred pages, 
entitled “Thirty Discussions, Bible Stories, Essays and Lec¬ 
tures ;” and more will follow. 

No special ability is claimed for Bennett as a writer, and 


D. M. BENNETT. 


10G3 


little for grace or style. If, as a writer, he has any merit, it is 
perhaps in being outspoken and easy to be understood. He 
writes for the average, ordinary class of people and not for the 
student, nor the highly cultured. It is unnecessary for the 
reader to be at a loss as to his meaning and object. He is not 
ambiguous, and means what he says. He understands as well 
as any one, that he is not a fine writer, and with his limited 
early advantages, and the busy life he has led, it ought, perhaps, 
hardly to be expected. He is willing, however, to make up in 
quantity, what he lacks in quality. 

In belief he is very radical, and has divested himself of 
nearly all the superstitions to which he once yielded assent. 
He has been gradually emerging from the influence of these old 
superstitions for the past thirty years. About the year 1848 he 
read for the first time an Infidel book, which greatly shook his 
confidence in the truth of the Bible and Christianity. Two 
years later, while on a trip to New York, he called upon Gilbert 
Yale, editor of the “Beacon ” and publisher and dealer in Lib¬ 
eral works and purchased some twenty volumes, great and 
small, and among others Paine’s “Age of Reason.” He read 
and re-read that and it confirmed him in the truth of the unan¬ 
swerable arguments therein contained. He has since had no 
confidence in the Bible, as being the word God, any more than 
in any other ancient or modern book. It contains some good 
morals and precepts, some fine specimens of ancient poetry and 
literature but a great deal that is crude, a great deal that is 
obscene, a great deal that is untrue, and but little that is 
adapted to the present condition of mankind. 

It was written by persons who had no correct ideas about 
the solar system, about the earth's revolving upon its own 
axes, or its coursing around the sun. Its writers knew nothing 
of the geological formation of the earth, of the immense anti¬ 
quity of the globe, or of the great antiquity of man. If they 
knew nothing of the sciences which learned and studious men 
have since found to be true, how can it reasonably be supposed 
that their knowledge of God—the most uncertain of all knowl- 
edge—sliould be any more correct, or of the slightest value? 

We are under no more obligation to accept as true what the 
Jews regard as “sacred writings” than those of the Hindoos, 


1070 


D. M. B 


the Chinese, the Japanese, the Persians, the Thibetans, the 
Siamese, the Egyptians, the Grecians, the Bomans, the Arabi¬ 
ans, the Druids, the Scandinavians, the Mexicans, cr any other 
of the ancient nationalities which the world has owned. When 
any of these ancient legends or fables clash with the truths of 
demonstrated scientific facts, we are fully justified in regarding 
them only as the conjectures or inventions of persons in olden 
times, and unworthy our assent as being the eternal truths of 
heaven. 

Bennett has thrown off all allegiance to fables, myths, and 
superstitions. He considers himself free to embrace truth 
wherever he finds it, and to discard errors and fallacies from 
whatever source they may come. 

He believes in the eternality and infinity of the Universe; 
that it contains all existences and forces; that there could have 
been nothing before it, can be nothing above it, nor outside of it. 
That every result that has taken place has been the product of 
preexisting and sufficient causes; something lias never been pro¬ 
duced from nothing. He regards the supers'ition of the belief 
in a God, who devised the Universe, formed it of nothing, and 
now keeps it running by his personal superintendence as the 
central superstition around which all other superstitions cluster, 
and the superstition that has been most detrimental to the 
human race. 

He regards the worship and adoration that has been bestowed 
upon an imaginary, unknown being, somewhere above the stars, 
as labor entirely thrown away. Such a being can neither be 
benefited nor injured by anything we can possibly do. Like 
the sun, he is entirely beyond our reach or influence. If all 
the emotional fervor and worship that has been bestowed upon 
this unknown deity could have been directed to humanity — to 
beings who really have an existence and are susceptible of 
being benefitted by the services of others—the world would have 
been vastly better off. If, instead of killing each other for the 
love of God, nations had aided each other for the love of man, 
the results would have been immensely better. 

He has a high veneration for humane actions, moral recti¬ 
tude, disinterested motives, noble deeds, the efforts to disseminate 
scientific knowledge among men, and every measure calculated 


D. M. BENNETT. 


1071 


to increase the happiness and well-being of the human race. 
He finds it as easy to accept and esteem the moral teachings 
of the ancient sages and philosophers, many of whom are treated 
in this volume, as though they were believers in, and advocates 
of the Christian religion. In fact he finds that the most zealous 
promulgators and teachers of this religion have done less to 
really elevate and advance mankind than almost any other class 
of teachers. They have rather helped to bind the human mind 
in chains and fetters of superstition and errors most difficult to 
be shaken off. 

The men who have do:.e the most to benefit the world — the 
men who have done most to lead mankind out of darkness and 
mental night — are the men who have taught real, living truths, 
the men who have taught science. This class of men discard 
mythical fables and mystical legends, and base their investiga¬ 
tions and their conclusions upon the facts which the closest 
scrutiny fully establishes. One sucn man as Franklin, Hum¬ 
boldt, Darwin, or Haeckel, has been of far more value to the 
world than all the St. Pauls, Constantines, John Calvins and 
Pio Ninos that ever lived. A scientific course of study of 
the operations of the Universe, the nature, and the material of 
wli'cli the globe is composed, and the endless combinations if 
enters into, Avitli the results thus reached, is the foundation of 
education and knowledge. In a word, Ignorance is the devil 
which bas curse 1 the world for thousands of years, and Science 
is the savior which alone is able to lead mankind to truth and 
consequent happiness. Bennett rejoices to see the light of sci¬ 
ence and demonstrated knowledge spreading over the earth. As 
this glorious light illumines the mental horizon of the world, 
so the myths, the fallacies, and the superstitions of primi¬ 
tive times, must assuredly retire to the dark recesses of obliv¬ 
ion. So far as priestcraft and the existing systems of religion 
interfere with this inevitable evolution, and so far as they tend 
to burden and enslave the human intellect, he is persistently 
opposed to them, and has devoted his feeble efforts, for the 
remainder of his life, to their ultimate destruction. 

Since the foregoing was printed Mr. Bennett has undergone 
that persecution which it has been the lot of thousands ; f her- 


1C12 


D. M. BENNETT. 


etics anrl disbelievers in the Christian theology to experience 
at t he ha nds of the Church. 

There is in the city of New York—where for several years Mr. 
Bennett had published “The Truth Seeker,” an outspoken rad¬ 
ical paper—a so-called Society for the Suppression of Vice, which 
is composed of members of the Young Men’s Christian Associa¬ 
tion, one of the most intolerant ecclesiastical organizations that 
ever existed, which, though formed ostensibly for a good purpose, 
has been converted into a society for the suppression of Free¬ 
thinkers. In 1877 it sought for some pretext for putting down 
“The Truth Seeker,” and Anthony Comstock, active agent and 
spy for the society, visited the office of Mr. Bennett and looked 
over his books to see what he could find. Among the selections 
made were “An Open Letter to Jesus Christ,” by D. M. Bennett, 
and “ How do Marsupials Propagate their Kind ?” by A. B. 
Bradford; the first a theological polemic, the second a scientific 
question in natural history. These were laid before his Chris¬ 
tian legal advisers, and the tracts were deemed sufficient to jus¬ 
tify a prosecution for blasphemy and obscenity. In order to 
bring it before his favorite court the spy must needs induce the 
defendant to send a copy of each of the tracts by mail. Accord¬ 
ingly he wrote a decoy letter in the fictitious name of S. Bender, 
Squan Village, N. J., inclosing the necessary money, and ordered, 
with other publications, the two tracts named. The order was 
filled. 

On Nov. 12th, Comstock visited the defendant armed with a 
warrant from a United States Commissioner, and accompanied 
by a United States marshal. He arrested Bennett and took him 
before U. S. Commissioner Shields, and also seized and bore 
away all the tracts of the two kinds named which defendant 
had in his possession. The Commissioner fixed the bail at 
$1,500, which was given. Comstock went before the Grand Jury 
and told his story, and they found a bill of indictment against 
Mr. Bennett. At this juncture the condemned tracts were by Col. 
Bobert G. Ingersoll brought to the notice of the Postmaster- 
General at Washington—and other officials there—and they were 
asked if it was their purpose to prosecute the publishers and 
mailers of that kind of literature. The result was that about 
January 1, 1878, instructions were sent from Washington to New 


D. M. BENNETT. 1073 

York that the case against Bennett be dismissed. Comstock 
was displeased at this, and declared, he would yet “get even 
with Bennett,” etc., etc 

In August, 1878, the Freethinkers of New York hold a four 
days’ convention at Watkins, at the head of Seneca Lake. Ben¬ 
nett attended with an assortment of his publications for sale. 
Near his table was one occupied by Josephine S. Tilton, who 
sold several pamphlets published by her brother-in-law, E. H. 
Heywood, who, in the preceding June, had been sent to prison 
two years by the United States Court in Boston, for mailing to 
Comstock, under the fictitious name of E. Edgewell, a copy of 
“ Cupid’s Yokes ” and “ Trail’s Sexual Physiology.” When Miss 
Tilton had occasion to leave her table for a moment, Bennett 
frequently acted for her in her absence, serving customers with 
what they called for from her table. In this way he probably 
sold one or more copies of “Cupid’s Yokes.” He had none for 
sale himself, and all he sold was for her, in which he had not 
the slightest pecuniary interest. Upon the authority of Anthony 
Comstock’s father, it may be stated that the son had written the 
Young Men’s Christian Association at Watkins to cause Bennett 
to be arrested if he sold “Cupid’s Yokes.” A young man, 
named Warren Hurd, was delegated to buy a copy of the tabooed 
pamphlet of Bennett, and for his handing one from Miss Til¬ 
ton’s table he was arrested, as was also W. S. Bell, who was 
assisting Bennett in selling books. Subsequently Miss Tilton 
and George Mosher were also arrested upon the same charge. 
Bail was easily furnished. The Grand Jury of the county soon 
met, and as it was known that the arrests had been made at 
the instance of the Bev. Mr. Waldo and other leading Christians 
of the town, a bill of indictment was readily found. 

When Mr. Bennett was arrested and indicted in Watkins he 
felt that he had been wronged. He knew the pamphlet was not 
obscene in the meaning of the statute. As an American citizen 
he considered he had a right to sell it, and although he took no 
particular interest in the pamphlet, he knew it was not obscene, 
and felt sure it was not illegal to sell it, and he announced in 
his paper that he would do so. Here was Comstock’s opportu¬ 
nity. He again resorted to his system of falsehood and hypoc¬ 
risy. He w T rote in the name of a fictitious personage, professing 


1074 


D. M. BENNETT. 


great sympathy and friendship, ordering books, among which 
was “ Cupid’s Yokes,” which of course w T ere duly sent by mail. 
Comstock, upon the meeting of the Grand Jury, went before 
them and in that ex varte tribunal easily procured an indict¬ 
ment, and Bennett was again arrested at Comstock’s dictation. 
District-Attorney Stewart L. Woodford did not believe the Grand 
Jury should have found a bill; he did not regard the pamphlet 
as obscene in the meaning of the statute and was not in favor 
of prosecuting the case; but his assistant, W. P. Fiero, however, 
ready to second Comstock’s wishes and to please the Christian 
community, entered zealously into the prosecution. The result 
■was that Mr. Bennett w T as convicted, although one of the jurj’ - - 
men afterwards wrote to the New York Herald that he rendered 
a verdict of guilty, after staying out all night, simply that the 
case might come before a higher court. He did not believe that 
the book came under the statute. The case was appealed, but 
as one of the judges was the same that tried the case, the ver¬ 
dict was affirmed, and on June 5, 1879, Mr. Bennett was sen¬ 
tenced to thirteen months’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of 
$300. Immediately efforts were made to obtain a pardon from 
the President, pending which Mr. Bennett was incarcerated in 
Ludlow-Street Jail, New York city. A petition bearing nearly 
SCO 000 names was sent to the Executive, and Col. Ingersoll 
worked indefatigably for seven weeks to secure his release. 
Attorney-General Devens, in a letter to Hon. Elizur Wright, 
declared that he did not regard the work obscene. Mr. Hayes 
himself said he did not so regard it. But the Christian minis¬ 
ters all over the country protested against the pardon of an 
Infidel, and Mr. Hayes was afraid to act in the matter. Nearly 
fifteen thousand letters were received by him upon the subject. 
Anthony Comstock went around the country getting signers to 
a petition to Mrs. Hayes, a notoriously pious woman, not to have 
Mr. Bennett pardoned. At the behest of the church justice was 
refused, and on the 28th of July Mr. Bennett was taken to 
Albany to serve out his sentence of hard labor. He was placed 
in the shoe shop and compelled to associate with criminals of 
the worst class for doing that which the highest judicial officer 
in the country, as well as the best citizens, pronounced no 
crime. A subsequent effort was made to secure his release, but 


« 


D. M. BENNETT. 10T5 

failed for the same reason as the first. His sentence expired 
April 29, 1880, the officers taking off two months and a few days 
for “good behavior.” 

The whole affair, arrest, trial, and conviction, was brought 
about by clerical scheming aided by the unscrupulous villainy 
of the active agent. The design was to suppress Mr. Bennett’s 
paper and destroy his publishing business, but the attempt was 
not successful. His paper and business were both continued 
during his imprisonment and after. The pardon was refused at 
the direct behest of the church, and when he went to prisbn 
one of the worst Christian outrages was consummated that ever 
disgraced our country. 



The Truth Seeker Library—Uniform in Size and Style, 


The World’s Sages, Thinkers, and Reformers. 

Being biographical sketches of distinguished Teachers, Philosophers, Innova¬ 
tors, Skeptics, Infidels, Founders of new schools of Thought and Religion, Dis¬ 
believers in current Theology, and the most active Humanitarians of the world. 

By D. M. Bennett, Editor of “The Truth Seeker.” Cloth $3; leather, red 
edges $4; morocco, gilt edges $4.50. 


THE ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 

BY VISCOUNT AMBERLEY. 

An elaborate examination into the origin and nature of the various religions 
of the world. A work of great research, embodying a large amount of val¬ 
uable information on the Origin of Religions. Its radical character excited the 
enmity of the leaders of the English Church, and great efforts were made by 
the Duke of Bedford and others to suppress it, which did not succeed. It 
attracted much attention in England as well as America. 

Faithfully produced, complete, from the London (two vol. octavo) edition, 
wliich sells at from $12 to $15. Price of this edition as above. 


The Great Works of Thomas Paine, Complete. 

Containing Life of Paine, Common Sense, The Crisis. The Rights of 
Man, The Age of Reason, Examination of Prophecies, Reply to the Bishop of 
Llandaff, Letter to Mr. Erskine, An Essay on Dreams, Letter to Camille Jor¬ 
dan, The Religion of Deism, Letter to Samuel Adams, etc. Price as above. 


THE CHAMPIONS OF TEE CHURCH. 

Being biographical sketches of eminent Christians, from the reputed founder 
of Christianity to the present time. A companion book to “ The World’s Sages, 
Thinkers, and Reformers,” containing a correct history of the distinguished orna¬ 
ments and diabolical characters of both the Romish and Protestant Churches. 
Also a fuH history of the bloody wars of Christianity which have been 
inhumanly waged to spread its rule. It contains a history of Jesuitism, the 
abominations of the Inquisition, Catholic and Protestant persecutions, etc., etc., 
and all from recognized Christian authorities. 1120 pages, octavo. Price aa 
above. By D. M. Bennett, Editor of “ The Truth Seeker.” 


SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 

BY PROF. TV. K. CLIFFORD, F.R.S. 

This remarkable and very able work was published anonymously in London, 
in three volumes, octavo, and doubtless excited more attention and criticism from 
theologians than any similar work that has appeared for the last century. It is 
unquestionably the ablest examination into the claims of Supernatural and 
Revealed Religion of any work that has as yet appeared. It exhausts the sub¬ 
jects of Miracles, The Synoptic Gospels, The Fourth Gospel, The Acts of the 
Apostles. The Resurrection and the Ascension, and contains full replies to the 
author’s critics. Published complete in one volume, from the last London edi 
tion, including Greek and Hebrew quotations. 

The English edition costs $12.50. The price of this complete edition, in cloth, 
$3.50; leather, red edges, $4.50; morocco, gilt edges, $5. 

The five volumes here designated sent by mail, in cloth at $12 50. By ex¬ 
press, $11 ; in leather, by mail $15 ; by express, $13.60. In morocco andgii* 
by mail, $20 ; by express, $18. 








Infe r 'r*>.gaf:.orie& to Jehovah, offered up from "The Truth Seeker” 
office A scries of dose questions upon h threat variety of subjects, to which 
answers are desired, from the Origin of Deity and the Universe, the Creation 
of the Earth, Man. and Woman, the Flood, the Bible, the Old Patriarchs and 
Prophets, down to tho Doctrinal Points embraced by the Church. A bold and 
radical work. By D. M. Bennett. 12rao. 250 pp. Paper, 50 cents; doth, 75 
cents. 

The Humphrey-Rennett Discussion. A Debate between Rev. 

G. H. Humphrey, Presbyterian clergyman, and D. M. Bennett, Editor of " Tho 
Truth Seeker,” held in the columns of “ The Truth Seeker,” commencing Apiil 
7, 1877, and continuing nearly six months. Three propositions were discussed, 
as follows: 1. Did Unbelievers in the Bible do as much for American Inde¬ 
pendence as Believers in it? 2. Has Infidelity done as much as Christianity to 
Promote Learning and Science? 3. Is there a Stronger Probability that Infi¬ 
delity is True than that the Bible is Divine? Bennett affirming, Humphrey 
denying. The discussion attracted marked attention both from believers and 
unbelievers in revealed religion, as in it both sides were fairly represented. 
12mo. 550 pp. Cloth, $1.00. 

Career of Religious Ideas. Their Ultimate the Religion op 
Science. An able examination of the sources of the past religions of Ho 
world. The subjects are treated in chapters separately as follows: 1. Intro¬ 
ductory; 2. What is Religion? 3. Fetiehism; 4. Polytheism; 5. Monotheism; 
6. Value of Ancient Bibles; Man’s Moral Progress Dependent on his Intellect¬ 
ual Growth; 8. The Great Theological Problems; 9. Man’s Fall; 10. Man'3 
Position—Fate, Free-will, Free-agency, Necessity, Responsibility; 11. Duties 
and Obligations of Man to God and to Himself; 12. The Ultimate of Religious 
Ideas. By Hudson Tuttle. 140 pp. 12mo. Paper, 50 cts ; cloth, 75 cts. 

The Last W5S1 and Testament of .Fean MesSfcr, Curate 
of the Romish Church in France in the eighteenth century, whose views upon 
theology were not published until after his death, and arc now for the first time 
presented in English. Very radical. Price, 25 cents. 

The Influence of Christianity upon Civilization. By 

B. F. Underwood. One of tho most able treatises upon tho subject ever writ¬ 
ten. Price, 25 cents. 

Christianity and Materialism. By B. F. Underwood. In this 
treatise the two systems are fairly and ably examined from a historical stand¬ 
point. Price, 15 cents. 

T3ie Resurrection of Jesus. By W. S. Bell. Revised and 
enlarged edition. Price, 25 cents. 

Religion Not History. An able examination of the morals and the¬ 
ology of tho teachings of the New Testament. By W. F. Newman, Emeritus 
Professor of University College, London. From the London edition Price 25 
cente. 

The Rennett-Teed Discussion. Between D. M. Bennett, edi 
tor of “ The Truth Seeker,” and. Cyrus Romultjs R. Teed, of Moravia, N. Y, 
Propositions discussed: “ Jesus Christ is not only Divine, but is the Lord God, 
Creator of Heaven and Earth.” Teed affirming, Bennett denying. Paper, 30 
cents; cloth, 50 cents. 

Chronicles of Simon Christiamis. nis Manifold and Wonder¬ 
ful Adventures in the -Land of Cosmos. A New Scripture from an antique 
manuscript (evidently inspired), discovered by I. N. Fidel, in conjunction with 
A. Hook, Esq. Vcry amusing. Price. 25 cents. 

What 3 Don’t Relieve; What I Do Relieve; 'Why, 
and Wherefore. Forthcoming. By D. M. Bennett, Editor of “ The 
Truth Seeker.” It covers about all the ground within the domain of Theology, 
Mysticism, Bible-olatry, Judaism, Christianity, Miracles. Supernaturalism, Faith, 
Humanitarianism, Common Sense, otc, 450 pp. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; 
cloth, $1.00. 


\ 


TRUTH SEEKER TRACTS, 

No. (REVISED LIST.) v Ot*. 

I Discussion on Prayer. D. M. Bennett and two Clergymen.. 8 

3 Oration on the Gods. R. G. Ingersoll.... h 

8 Thomas Paine. R. G. Ingersoll. &•••• * 

4 Arraignment of the Church. R. G. Ingersoll.8 

5 Heretics and Heresies. R. G. Ingersoll.. 8 

6 Humboldt. R. G. Ingersoll. f 

7 The Story of Creation. D. M. Bennett. fi 

8 The Old Snake Story. D. M. Bennett. . . 3 

9 The Story of the Flood, D. M. Bennett. 5 

10 The Plagues of Egypt. D. M. Bennett. 3 

II Korah, Datham, and Abiram, D. M. Bennett...• a 

12 Balaam and his Ass. D. M. Bennett. 3 

13 Arraignment of Priestcraft. D. M. Bennett. 8 

14 Old Abo and Little Ike. John Syphers.... 3 

15 Come to Dinner. J. Syphers... 3 

16 Fog Horn Documents. J. Syphers. 3 

17 The Devil Still Ahead. J. Syphers. 2 

18 Slipped Up Again. J. Syphers. 2 

19 Joshua Stopping the Sun and Moon. D. M. Bennett. 2 

20 Samson and his Exploits. D. M. Bennett. 2 

21 The Great Wrestling Match. D. M. Bennett. a 

22 Discussion with Elder Shelton. D. M. Bennett....... 10 

23 Reply to Elder Shelton’s Fourth Letter. D. M. Bennett. 3 

24 Christians at Work. Wm. McDonnell. 8 

25 Discussion with Geo. Snode. D. M. Bennett. > 5 

28 Underwood’s Prayer. 1 

27 Honest Questions and Honest Answers. D. M. Bennett. 8 

28 Alessandro di Cagliostro. C. Sotheran. 10 

29 Paine Hall Dedication Address. B. F. Underwood. 2 

80 Woman’s Rights and Man’s Wrongs. J. Syphers. 2 

31 Gods and God-houses J. Syphers. 2 

32 The Gods of Superstition and the God of the Universe. Bennett..... 8 

83 What has Christianity Done ? S. H. Preston. 3 

34 Tribute to Thomas Paine. S. H. Preston.•.. 2 

35 Moving tho Ark. D. M. Bennett. 2 

36 Bennett’s Prayer to the Devil. 2 

87 Short Sermon. Rev, Theologicus. .................................. 2 

88 Christianity not a Moral System. X. Y. Z. 2 

89 The True Saint. S. P. Putnam. 1 

40 Bible of Nature vs. The Bible of Mon. J. Syphers... 3 

41 Our Ecclesiastical Gentry. D. M. Bennett.1 

42 Elijah the Tishbite. D. M. Bennett. 3 

43 Christianity a Borrowed Systom. D. M. Bennett... 3 

44 Design Argument Refuted. Underwood... 3 

45 Elisha the Prophet. D. M. Bennett. 8 

48 Did Jesus Really Exist? D. M. Bennett. 3 

47 Cruelty and Credulity of the Human Race, Dr. Daniel Arter. l 

4# Freathought in the West. G. L. Henderson. 5 

49 Sensible Conclusions. E.E. Guild. 5 

50 Jonah and the Big Fish. D. M. Bennett. 3 

51 Sixteen Truth Seeker Leaflets. No. 1. 8 

62 Marples-Underwood Debate. B. F. Underwood...... 3 

63 Questions for Bible Worshipers. B. F. Underwood......... 2 

54 An Open Letter to Jesus Christ. D. M. Bennett.. 5 






















































65 The Bible God Disproved by Nature. W. E. Coleman. 8 

to Bible Contradictions. 1 

57 Jesus not a Perfect Character. Underwood. 2 

53 Prophecies.". 2 

69 Bible Prophecies Concerning Babylon. Underwood. 2 

60 Ezekiel’s Prophecies Concerning Tyre.". 2 

61 History of the Devil. Paden. 6 

62 The Jews and their God. PadeD. 10 

63 The Devil’s Due-Bills. Syphers. 3 

64 The Ills we Endure—Their Cause and Cure. Bennett. 6 

65 Short Sermon No. 2. Rev. Theologicus, D. D. 3 

66 God-Idea in History. H. B. Brown. 6 

67 Sixteen Truth Seeker Leaflets. No. 2. 5 

68 Ruth’s Idea of Heaven and Mine. Susan H. Wixon. 2 

C9 Missionaries. Mrs. E. D. Slenker. 3 

70 Vicarious Atonement. J. S. Lyon. 3 

71 Paine’s Anniversary. C. A. Codman. 2 

72 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Bennett. 2 

73 Foundations. Syphers. 2 

74 Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Bennett. 2 

75 An Hour with the Devil.". 10 

76 Reply to Erastus F. Brown....". 3 

77 The Fear of Death.". 6 

78 Christmas and Christianity...". 6 

79 The Relationship of Jesus, Jehovah, and the Virgin Mary. W. E. 

Coleman. 2 

80 Address on Paine’s 139th Birthday. Bennett. I 

81 Hereafter; or, the Half-Way House. Syphers . 2 

82 Christian Courtesy. Bennett. 1 

83 Revivalism Examined. Dr. A. G. Humphrey. 6 

84 Moody’s Sermon on Hell. Rev. J. P. Hopps, London. 2 

85 Matter, Motion, Life, and Mind. Bennett. 10 

86 An Enquiry About God’s Sons.". 2 

87 Freethought Judged by its Fruits. Underwood. 1 

88 David, God’s Peculiar Favorite. Mrs. Slenker. 3 

89 Logic of Prayer. C. Stephenson. 3 

90 Biblo-Mania. Otter Cordates. 2 

91 Our Ideas of God. Underwood. 1 

92 The Bible; is it Divinely Inspired? D. Arter. 2 

93 Obtaining Pardon for Sins. Hudson Tuttle. 1 

94 The Now Raven. Will Cooper. 6 

95 Jesus Christ. Bennett. io 

96 Iehabod Crane Papers. 10 

97 Special Providences. W. S. Bell. 2 

98 Snakes. Mrs. E. D. Slenker. 2 

99 Do the Works of Nature Prove a Creator? Sciota. 2 

too The Old and tho New. Ingersoll.•. 6 

101 140th Anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Birthday. Bennett et als . 5 

102 The Old Religion and the New. W. S. Bell. 1 

103 Does the Bible Teach us all we know? Bennett. 2 

104 Evolution of Israel’s God. A. L. Rawson. io 

105 Decadence of Christianity. Capphro. 2 

106 Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, Unbelievers. 2 

107 The Safe Side. H. B. Brown. 6 

L03 The Holy Bible a Historical Humbug. S. H. Preston. 2 

109 Ghosts. Ingersoll. 5 

110 Invocation to the Universe. Bennett. 1 

111 Reply to Scientific American. Bennett. 1 

jtl 2 Sensible Sermon* Rev. M. J. Savage..-... i 





























































113 Com* to Jesus. Bennett. 

114 Where was Jesu^Born? S. H. Preston..!.!..............*]. 

115 The Wonders of Prayer. Bennett. 

116 The Sunday Question. Bennett. 

117 Constantine the Great. Preston.!!!!.*!!!!!!.. 

118 The Irrepressible Conflict between Christianity and Civilization. 

W. S. Bell. 

119 The New Faith. J. L. Stoddard. 

120 Liberty for Man. Woman, and Child. Ingersoli!!!!! 

121 Ingorsoll’s Review of his Reviewers. 

122 The Great Religions of the World. Bennett*.!!!!!!!! 

123 Paine Vindicated. Ingersoli.!..! 

124 Sinful Saints, etc. Bennett. 

125 German Liberalism. Mrs. Clara Neyman.! 

126 Crimes and Cruelties of Christianity. Underwood! 

127 Tyndall on Man’s Soul. 

128 Paine Glorified. Ingersoli. 

129 Who was Jesus Christ? W. E. Coleman. 

130 The E hies of Religion. W. K. Clifford. 

131 Paine was Junius. W. H. Burr. 

132 My Religious Belief. Ella Gibson. 

133 The Authority of the Bible. Underwood. 

134 Talks with the Evangelists. Elmer Woodruff. M. D 

135 Is there a Future Life? Bennett. 

136 Torquemada and the Inquisition. Bennett. 

137 Christian Love C. L. James. 

138 Science and the Bible. John Jasper. 

139 Massacre of St. Bartholomew. S. H. Preston. 

140 Astro-Theology. L. L. Dawson. 

141 Infidelity. H. W. Beecher. 

142 Sepher Toldoth Jeschu. Scholasticus. 

SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 


1 Hereditary Transmission. Prof. Louis Elsberg, M. D. 3 

2 Evdmion; from the Homogeneous to the Heterogeneous. Under¬ 

wood . 3 

3 Darwinism. Underwood. 5 

4 Literature of the Insane. F. R. Marvin. 6 

6 Responsibility of Sex. Mrs. Sara B. Chase, M. D. 6 

6 Graduated Atmospheres. J. McCarroll. 3 

7 Death. Frederic R. Marvin, M. D. 5 

8 How do Marsupial Animals Propagate their kind? A. B. Bradford.. 5 

9 The Unseen World. Prof. J. Fiske. 10 

10 The Evolution Theory—Huxley’s Three Lectures. 19 

11 Is America the New World? L. L. Dawson. 19 

12 Evolution Teaches neither Atheism nor Materialism. R. S. Brigham, 

13 Nibble at J. Fiske’s Crumb for the Modern Symposium. W. S 


Teems.—O n one dollars’ worth, 10 per cent off; on two dollars’ worth, 20 off; 
on five dollars’ worth, 40 off; on ten dollars’ worth 50 off. 

THE “ HOLY CROSS ” SERIES.— Essentially Anti-Papal. 

No. l. The Priest in Absolution. Twenty-five cents. 

No. 2. The Mothor of Harlots; or. Popery Disseoted. Paper, 60 cents; cloth, 
75 cents. 

No. 3. The Popes and their Doings; or, the Vicars of Christ and Vicege¬ 
rents of God. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents. 

No. 8. Auricular Confession and Nunneries. By Wm. Hogan, for twenty* 
five year* a eonfeaaiag *rie#t. Piftyeeata. Aad several other* 


3 

5 

3 

10 

10 

10 

2 

10 

5 

5 
2 
o 
3 
1 
2 

6 
3 
3 
3 
2 
2 
3 
1 

10 










































BOLD BOOKS FOR BRAVE BRAINS. 



Forms for the organization of Liberal Associations, Liberal Leagues, 
etc. Forms for Marriages, Funeral Services and various other purposes, 
with a full selection of original and selected Hymns and Songs for the 
use of Radicals, Spiritualists and Liberals of all classes to be used at 

E ublic meetings, funerals, social gatherings, etc. Price 75 cts. Pub- 
shed by D. M. BENNETT, 

141 Eighth Street, New York. 


JOHN’S WAY. 

A Pleasing Domestic Radical Story of a suggestive, instructive char¬ 
acter, and well calculated to overthrow the superstitions and absurdities 
of the Church. By Mrs. Elmina D. Slenker, author of “ Studying 
the Bible,” etc. Thousands of copies of this little work should be 
placed in the hands of honest enquirers after truth. Price only 15 cts., 
$1.50 per dozen, or $10.00 per hundred. D. M. BENNETT, 
_141 Eighth Street, New York. 

Six Lectures on Astronomy. 

Delivered in Steinway Hall, New York, by Prop. Richard A. Prog- 
tor. Price, 20 cents._ __ 

Eight Scientific Tracts. 

125 pages. Price, 20 cents._ 

Theory of Evolution. 

Three lectures by Prop. Thomas Henry Huxley. Delivered in 
Chickering Hall, New York. Price, 10 cents. 

The Unseen V/orld. 

A popular and able treatise by Prop. J ohn Fiske. Price, 10 cents. 

Is America the New World? 

By L. L. Dawson. A paper showing great research. Price, 10 cents. 


UNDERWOOD - MARPLES DEBATE. 

BETWEEN 

B. F. UNDERWOOD, of Boston, Mass., Liberal Lecturer, 

AND 

Rev. JOHN MARPLES, of Toronto, Ont., of the Presbyterian Church. 
Held during four evenings in July, 1876, at Napanee. Ont. 

Two propositions Discussed. First —“That Atheism, Materialism, 
and Modern Skepticism are illogical and contrary to reason.” Marplki 
affirming; Underwood denying. Second —“The Bible, consisting of 
the Did and New Testaments, evidences beyond all other books, its 
divine origin.” Marples affirming; Underwood denying. 

Reported in full by John T. Hawks, of the Toronto Daily Leader 
Paper, 40 cents ; leather, 75 cents. D. M. BENNETT, 

141 Eighth St., New York. 










BOLD BOOKS FOR BRAVE BHAIfjp, 


THE GODS AND OTHER LECTURES 


BY COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 


Cheap Edition. Containing in full, “ Oration on the Gods,” “ Hum¬ 
boldt,” “Thomas Paine,” “ Arraignment of the Church, or Individual¬ 
ity,” and “ Heretics and Heresies.” Among all the works from the Lib¬ 
eral press, in force, clearness, incisiveness, eloquence and originality, 
none equal these admirable lectures. Let everybody secure a copy. 
Price, in paper, 30 cents; cloth, 50 cents. 


TRUTH SEEKER TRACTS 


Bound Volumes I., II., III. and IV. These volumes, containing over 
500 pages each are made up of over one hundred Truth Seeker Tracts as 
given in “The Truth Seeker;” with some added. They embrace a 
variety of subjects by different authors, and in a terse, trenchant, and 
spicy style. Many commendations have been received of the valuable 
and useful character of The Truth Seeker Tracts, and the great good 
they are doing in the community. It is found very convenient to have 
them bound in volumes for preservation, perusal and reference. Each 
volume will contain a wood-cut likeness of the publisher and part author. 
They are offereci to the public at the extremely low price of 60 cents per 
voiume in paper covers; and $1.00 in cloth; or $1.50 for the first three 
volumes in paper, and $2.50 'for the first three volumes in cloth, or $2.00 
for the four volumes inpapr'r, and $3.25 for the four volumes in cloth. 




BY WIN WOOD READE. 
Author of ’* The Martyrdom of Man,” etc. 


The English edition c? “The Outcast” sells at $2.00. This full and 
perfect edition we sell at 30 cents, in paper; 50 cents in cloth. 


THE ADVENTURES OF ELDER TRIPTOLEMUS TUB s 


Comprising Important and Startling Disclosures Concerning Hell; Its 
Magnitude, Morals, Employments, Climate, etc. All very authentic. 
By Rev. George Rogers. A rich, interesting little work. In paper, 
25 cents. 


BLAKEMAS’S fW3 HUNDRED POETICAL RIDDLES, 


(tor children and youth,) embracing a great variety of subjects. This 
little work is new and interesting, and affords a great amount of amuse¬ 
ment in the family circle, as well as in gatherings of children and older 


people. Price, 20 cents. 


D. M. BENNETT, 

Liberal and Scientific Publishing House, 

Science Hail, 141 Eighth St., New York. 










THE “HOI*Y CROSS” SERIES. 

No. 1. T3ie Priest in Absolution. This work is an abstract 
from the larger volume published in England in 1876, and 
which in consequence of the great plainness, and in fact 
indecency of language, was suppressed by the legal authorities. 
The abstract is also a criticism and denunciation of the prac¬ 
tice of the Confessional, and is designed with the “Holy Cross” 
series in its entirety to show up the censurable and abomina¬ 
ble conduct of the Romish Church in its true light. Twenty- 
five cents. 

No. 2. The Mother of Harlots; or, Popery Dissected; 

being an inside view of the enormities of the Romish Church 
in Europe and America, and taken from authentic sources. 
Eifty cents. 

No. 3. The Popes and their Doings ; or, the Vicars of 
Christ and Vicegerents of God. A succinct history of some 
of the blackest criminals the earth has ever borne. Eifty 
cents. 

No. 4. Facts About the Jesuits. A succinct history of these 
pious villians from Loyola down to the present date. Eifty 
cents. 

No. 6. The Story of the Crusades ; or, the Shame of His¬ 
tory. A terse and startling narrative of the foolhardy fanati¬ 
cal and depopulating expeditions by which it is estimated the 
blood of thirty million human beings was made to redden the 
earth. Eifty cents. 

No. 6. The Atrocities of the Inquisition. Illustrated. 

The blackest disgrace of humanity, by which according to 
Victor Hugo, the great French writer, more than five millions 
of human beings were put to death in the most excruciating 
torture, in dungeons, on the ra*k, in the death-chamber, and 
at the stake in fire. Fifty cents. 

No. 7. Horrible Persecutions by the Church, includ¬ 
ing the conduct of the Church towards the Moors of Spain, 
the Vaudois, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Huguenots, 
the Quakers, and others, by which millions of unfortunate 
men and women were inhumanly put to death. Illustrated. 
Eifty cents. 

No. 8. Auricular Confession and Nunneries. ByWm. 

Hogan, for twenty-five years a confessing priest. A most 
important book. Fifty cents. 

No. 9. Maria Monk, or the Mysteries of a Convent, alias Monks 
and their Maidens. Eifty cents. 

No. 10. Priestly Celibacy Exposed. By Rev. George Town¬ 
send Fox. A full disclosure of foul priestly practices. 
Fifteen cents. 

No. 11. Newton’s Thoughts on Popery. Fifteen cents. 

No. 12. Popery only Christian Paganism. Fifteen cents. 

No. 13. From Windsor to Rome, through Anglican Sister 
hoods. Ten cents. 


BOLD BOOKS FOR Br*AVE BRAINS. 


THIRTY DISCUSSIONS, 

Bible Stories, Lectures and Essays. 

BY D. M. BENNETT, 

Editor of “The Truth Seeker;” 

Including “ A Discussion on Prayer with two Clergymen,” “ The Story 
of Creation,” “ The Old Snake Story,” The Story of the Flood,” “ The 
Plagues of Egypt,” “Korah, Datham and Abiram,” “Balaam and his 
Ass,” “Arraignment of Priestcraft,” “Joshua Stopping the Sun and 
3Ioon,” “Samson and his Exploits,” “The Great Wrestling Match,” 
“Discussion with Elder Shelton,” “ Reply to Elder Shelton’s Fourth 
Letter,” “Discussion with George Snode,” “Honest Questions and 
Honest Answers,” “TheGods of Superstition and the God of the Uni¬ 
verse,” “Moving the Ark,” “Bennett’s Prayer to the Devil,” “Our 
Ecclesiastical Gentry,” “Elijah the Tishbite,” “ Christianity a Borrowed 
System,” “Elisha the Prophet,” “ Did Jesus Really Exist ? ” “Jonah 
and the Big Fish,” “An Open Letter to Jesus Christ,” “The Ills we 
Endure, their Cause and Cure,” “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,’* 
“ Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” “An Hour with the Devil,” “Discussion 
with Erastus F. Brown,” “The Fear of Death.” The whole comprises 
nearly seven hundred pages, and the subjects treated can hardly prove 
uninteresting to the reader. A wood-cut likeness of the author also 
accompanies the work. Price, 75 cents in paper; $1.00 in cloth. 


THE BURGESS-UNDERWOOD DEBATE 


BETWEEN 


PROF. O. A. BURGESS, 

President of the Northwestern Christian University of Indianapolis, Ind.. 

AND 

B. F. UNDERWOOD, 

Of Boston, Mass. 

Held during four days at Aylmer, Ont., commencing June 39, 187S 

REPORTED BY JOHN T. HAWKE. 

First Proposition .—“ The Christian Religion, as set forth in the New 
Testament, is true in fact, and of divine origin.” Burgess in the 
affirmative; Underwood in the negative. 

Second Proposition .—“The Bible is erroneous in many of its teach* 
ings regarding Science and Morals, and is of human origin.” Under¬ 
wood in the affirmative; Burgess in the negative. 

Every person fond of hearing both sides of questions of the magni¬ 
tude of those here presented, will, in this volume, be thoroughly pleas¬ 
ed and sliou'd avail himself of the opportunity of procuring A. 
12 mo., 180 pp. Price, in paper, 60 cents; in cloth, $1. 























THE TRUTH SEEKER, 

A Weekly Journal of Progress and Eeform; 

DEVOTED TO 

SCIENCE, MORALS, FREETHOUGHT AND 
HUMAN HAPPINESS. 


D. M. BENNETT, Editor and Publisher. 

Believing there is nothing in the world so valuable as Truth, “ Th^ 
Truth Seeker ” is earnest and constant in search of it, and hesitate* 
not to fearlessly avow its honest convictions. It is outspoken in its con¬ 
demnation of the errors and fallacies of the past, and in holding up in 
the light of the present era the theological dogmas and the blinding 
creeds of pagan superstition which had their origin thousands of years 
ago, in the primitive ages of our race. 

“The Truth Seeker” was started as an eight-page Monthly, in 
Paris, Ill., in September, 1873. Four numbers were issued in that local¬ 
ity, when it was decided to remove it to New York, and to double its 
number of pages. With the beginning of its second volume, it became 
a Semi-Monthly, and the second volume was continued sixteen months, 
to the close of 1875, when it became a Weekly of eight pages. At the 
commmencement of its fourth volume, in January, 1877, it will contain 
sixteen pages; steadily growing and increasing in popularity with its 
readers. It is believed “ The Truth Seeker ” is destined to become 
the recognized champion and mouth-piece of the rapidly growing Liberal 
and progressive element of the country. 

Every lover of Truth; every person favorable to the fearless expres¬ 
sion of honest opinion; every individual who wishes to spread broad¬ 
cast the glad tidings of Right and Reason; every friend of mental lib¬ 
erty who desires that sectarianism, superstition, bigotry, and error shall 
retire to the rear, should subscribe for the valiant “Truth Seeker,” 
and induce as many others to do so as possible. 

The friends of truth and progress can hardly be said to have dis¬ 
charged their full duty who do not lend their support to this meritoriou* 
publication. 

Its very moderate terms places it within the reach of all. It is sent, 
post-paid, 

Twelve Months for . - . v . . $3 00 

Six Months for ... - . . 1 50 

Three Months for . . . . . 75 . 

a 

Sample copies sent upon application. 

The names of all Liberal-minded people are solicited, who would be 
likely to appreciate a periodical of this character. 

D. M. BENNETT, Editor and Proprietor, 
Science Hall, 141 Eighth St., New York. 







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